From the Hill / Yahoo!News:
"Opinion - Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was never about NATO expansion
Last week, Trump-appointed special envoy Steve Witkoff called Ukraine’s NATO ambitions “a threat to the Russians,” implying that this is what provoked the war three years ago. “The war didn’t need to happen — it was provoked. It doesn’t necessarily mean it was provoked by the Russians,” Witkoff said on CNN.
His message is clear: Russia was backed into a corner, forced to act in self-defense when it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The evidence, of course, tells a different story — one of imperial ambition, not self-preservation.
The claim that NATO expansion triggered the war is nothing new. Western leaders, including those in the Biden administration, France and Germany, have long voiced concerns about Ukraine’s membership, often out of fear of escalating tensions with Russia. But what President Trump is doing is qualitatively different, and far more dangerous.
Previous administrations sought to prevent an all-out NATO-Russia conflict, but they never endorsed the idea that Ukraine was to blame for the war. Their hesitation was a strategic calculation to avoid another world war. Witkoff’s comments, however, go much further: they directly echo Russian propaganda, arguing that Ukraine’s pursuit of security guarantees was reckless and that NATO ambitions caused the war.
With these remarks, the U.S. has now officially embraced one of Russia’s biggest lies.
If NATO expansion were truly the trigger, why did Vladimir Putin wait until 2022 to invade? Why not in 2008, when Ukraine first sought membership, or in 2014, when NATO discussions resurfaced after Russia seized Crimea
The truth is that Ukraine was nowhere near joining NATO. There was no Membership Action Plan, and key NATO members had made it clear they were unwilling to admit Ukraine any time soon.
Ukraine’s NATO aspirations were not a provocation. They were a response to Russian aggression: the illegal annexation of Crimea, the Russian proxy war in Donbas, and Moscow’s long-standing efforts to control Ukraine politically, economically and culturally.
In his Feb. 21, 2022, speech justifying the war, Putin barely mentioned NATO. Instead, he fixated on Ukraine as an artificial state, an accident of history, a wayward part of the so-called “Russian world.” His argument had nothing to do with military threats or self-defense; it was an assertion of imperial entitlement. It echoed his 2021 essay, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” which outright denied Ukraine’s legitimacy as a sovereign nation.
Russia’s pre-invasion demands further expose the hollowness of the NATO excuse. Moscow didn’t just insist that Ukraine never join the alliance — it demanded NATO withdraw from Eastern Europe entirely, rolling back security guarantees for Poland, the Baltics and other frontline states. This was never just about Ukraine. It was a broader push to reassert Russian dominance over its former empire.
Russia’s pattern of aggression is the clearest refutation of the “NATO expansion” myth. Georgia, attacked in 2008, was not on the verge of NATO membership. Ukraine, invaded in 2014, had no realistic path to joining the alliance. Russia was not and is not defending itself against NATO — it is targeting neighbors seeking independence from its grip.
Witkoff’s disgraceful parroting of Kremlin propaganda is not diplomacy
in pursuit of peace. It is a demoralizing attempt to undermine Ukraine
and weaken Europe. By framing any defensive posture as a “provocation”
against Russia while excusing Russian aggression as self-defense, he
legitimizes the very logic used to justify war and subjugation.
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