The reason why Russian and Ukrainian started a war, the American-led initiative turn

Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia's borders become the basis of the issue. This plan
has three components that is bringing Ukraine into the Europe, transforming it into a liberal
democracy that supports the West, and most significantly, bringing Ukraine into NATO. The
plan was put into motion when NATO said that Ukraine and Georgia "shall become
members" at its annual summit in Bucharest in April 2008. The decision was met with swift
indignation by Russian authorities, who made it clear that they viewed it as an existential
threat and had no intention of allowing either country to join NATO. Putin "flew into a
passion," according to a reputable Russian journalist, and threatened that "if Ukraine joins
NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions."

However, the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, William Burns, who is currently
the head of the CIA but served as the US ambassador to Moscow during the Bucharest
conference, simply summarises Russian thought on this subject. "Ukrainian membership in
NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite," he said (not just Putin). In more
than 2.5 years of discussions with influential Russian figures, ranging from knuckle-draggers
in the Kremlin to some of Putin's savviest liberal detractors, I have yet to come across
anybody who does not see Ukraine joining NATO as a direct threat to Russian interests.
NATO "would be perceived as laying down the strategic gauntlet," he claimed. Russia of
today will react. Relations between Russia and Ukraine will become severely frozen. It will
make the ground ideal for Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

As a result, burns were not the only decision-maker who recognised the risks
associated with including Ukraine in NATO. Therefore, at the Bucharest Summit, both
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected pressing
through with Ukraine's NATO membership since they knew it would alarm and enrage
Russia. Merkel recently defended her approach, saying, "I was extremely convinced that
Putin was not just going to let that happen. That would be a declaration of war in his eyes.

Nevertheless, the bush administration paid little attention to Moscow's "brightest of

red lines" and exerted pressure on the leaders of France and Germany to agree to making a
public statement announcing that Ukraine and Georgia will soon join the alliance.

Unsurprisingly, four months after the Bucharest conference, a conflict broke out
between Georgia and Russia as a result of the American-led campaign to get Georgia into
NATO. Even so the United States and its allies persisted in carrying out its intentions to turn
Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia's frontiers. These initiatives ultimately led to a
significant crisis in February 2014, when the pro-Russian president of Ukraine, Viktor
Yanukovych, fled the nation due to an uprising sponsored by the US. The pro-American
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk took his post. In retaliation, Russia annexed Crimea from
Ukraine and aided in igniting a civil war in eastern Ukraine's Donbass area between pro-
Russian rebels and the Ukrainian government.

Last but not least, United States claimed and its allies gave little attention to bringing
Ukraine into NATO during the eight years between the beginning of the crisis in February
2014 and the start of the war in February 2022 is one that is frequently made. Since the topic
had effectively been dropped off the table, NATO expansion could not have been a
significant factor in the developing crisis in 2021 and the ensuing start of conflict earlier this
year. This line of reasoning is fallacious. In actuality, the Western response to the events of
2014 was to intensify the current course of action and bring Ukraine closer to NATO. In
2014, the alliance started preparing the Ukrainian military, and during the following eight
years, it trained 10,000 soldiers yearly on average. The Trump administration chose to
provide "defensive weaponry" to Kyiv in December 2017. Soon after, more NATO nations
joined in and sent more weaponry to Ukraine.

The Ukrainian military has recently started taking part in joint military drills with
NATO forces. Operation Sea Breeze, a naval drill in the Black Sea that comprised warships
from 31 nations and was specifically targeted at Russia, was co-hosted by Kyiv and
Washington in July 2021. The United State Army billed Rapid Trident 21 as an "annual
exercise aimed to promote interoperability across ally and partner nations, to demonstrate
troops are poised and ready to respond to any crisis." The Ukrainian army led it two months
later, in September 2021. The Ukraine has performed so well against Russian soldiers in the
present battle can be partially attributed to NATO's efforts to arm and train its military. As a
headline in The Wall Street Journal put it, “The Secret of Ukraine’s Military Success: Years
of NATO Training.”

The politics surrounding Ukraine's membership in NATO and its integration into the
West shifted in 2021, in addition to NATO's continuous attempts to strengthen the Ukrainian
military as a combatant force. Both in Kyiv and Washington, there was a rekindled zest for
achieving those objectives. After being elected in March 2019 on a platform that called for
collaborating with Russia to resolve the ongoing crisis. President Zelensky had never shown
much enthusiasm for bringing Ukraine into NATO reversed course in early 2021 and not only
embraced NATO expansion but also adopted a hard-line stance toward Moscow. He took a
number of actions that were certain to enrage Moscow, including as shutting down pro-
Russian TV stations and accusing a close ally of Putin of treason.

Zelensky paid a visit to the White House on September 1, 2021, when Biden made it
plain that the US was "firmly committed" to "Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic goals." The "US-
Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership" was then signed on November 10, 2021, by
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba. In the
declaration, it was claimed that both sides wanted to underscore a commitment to Ukraine's
adoption of the deep and comprehensive reforms essential for full integration into European
and Euro-Atlantic institutions. The 2008 Bucharest Summit Declaration is expressly
reaffirmed, and the statement builds on the pledges made to expand the Ukraine - U.S.
strategic cooperation by Presidents Zelensky and Biden.

There is little question that Ukraine started moving quickly toward NATO
membership in early 2021. However, some proponents of this strategy contend that Moscow
should not have worried as "NATO is a defensive alliance and presents no danger to Russia."
But Putin and other Russian officials don't view NATO in that way, and it matters what they
believe. Without a doubt, Moscow's "brightest of red lines" remained Ukraine's membership
in NATO.

To deal with this growing threat, Putin stationed ever-increasing numbers of Russian
troops on Ukraine’s border between February 2021 and February 2022. His aim was to
coerce Biden and Zelensky into altering course and halting their efforts to integrate Ukraine
into the West. On December 17, 2021, Moscow sent separate letters to the Biden
administration and NATO demanding a written guarantee that “Ukraine would not join
NATO”. Next, “no offensive weapons would be stationed near Russia’s borders” and lastly,
“NATO troops and equipment moved into eastern Europe since 1997 would be moved back
to western Europe.”

Throughout this time, Putin made a number of public remarks that made it quite clear
that he considered NATO's encroachment into Ukraine to be an existential danger. On
December 21, 2021, he said in a speech to the Defence Ministry Board that “what they are
doing, or trying or planning to do in Ukraine, is not happening thousands of kilometres away
from our national border. It is on the doorstep of our house. They must understand that we
simply have nowhere further to retreat to. Do they really think we do not see these threats? Or
do they think that we will just stand worthlessly watching threats to Russia emerge?”. On
February 22, 2022, only days before the commencement of the conflict, two months later,
during a press conference, Putin said “We are unequivocally opposed to Ukraine joining
NATO because this constitutes a threat to us, and we have grounds to justify this. I've
discussed it several times in this room. Then, he made it obvious that he understood that
Ukraine was formally joining NATO. He said that "the present Kiev authorities are still being
pumped full of modern sorts of weaponry" by the United States and its allies. If this was not
halted, he continued, Moscow "would be left with an 'anti-Russia" that was well-armed. It's
really inappropriate.”

Americans, who have long adhered to the Monroe Doctrine, which states that no
faraway major power is permitted to station any of its military forces in the Western
Hemisphere, should understand Putin's argument well.

There is no indication from Putin's public pronouncements in the months before the
conflict that he planned to attack more nations in eastern Europe or perhaps take over
Ukraine and make it a part of Russia. The defence minister, the foreign minister, the deputy
foreign minister, and the Russian ambassador to Washington were among the other Russian
figures who stressed the importance of NATO expansion in bringing about the Ukraine
conflict. At a news conference on January 14, 2022, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
concisely stated, "The key to everything is the certainty that NATO would not expand
eastward."

Lastly, Lavrov and Putin's attempts to persuade the United States and its allies to give
up their efforts to turn Ukraine into a Western bastion on Russia's border were absolutely
ineffective. In response to Russia's requests in mid-December, Secretary of State Antony
Blinken only stated, "There is no change. There won't be any adjustments. To counter the
threat he perceived from NATO, Putin then invaded Ukraine.
Conclusion

To put it simply, the current crisis in Ukraine is a massive calamity that, as I said at
the beginning of my address, will prompt people all over the world to look for its origins. The
United States and its allies are mostly to blame for this train accident, as those who adhere to
facts and logic will rapidly find out. It seemed inevitable that there would be tension with
Russia after the decision to admit Georgia and Ukraine to NATO in April 2008. That
disastrous decision was primarily engineered by the Bush administration, but it was
continued by the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, and Washington's allies
obediently followed their example. The United States steadfastly worked to make Ukraine a
Western bastion on Russia's border despite the fact that Russian authorities made it very clear
that doing so would be crossing "the brightest of red lines" and would be against all
international law.

Tragically, it is unlikely that there would be a conflict in Ukraine today and Crimea
would still be a part of Ukraine if the West had not sought NATO expansion into Ukraine. In
essence, Washington was the main factor that steered Ukraine toward ruin. The United States
and its allies will receive a severe judgement from history for their incredibly misguided
approach to Ukraine.