NATO could have done more to avert Ukraine war: Stoltenberg

https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-russia-ukraine-war-jens-stoltenberg/

19 Comments

  1. Would providing Ukraine with more equipment before the war have averted the war, or would it have given Putin more excuses to cause it?

    NATO and America are “warmongers” when it gives nations the means to defend themselves against aggressors, but also blamed for the actions of invading aggressors for not giving out more weapons.

    Unless this man is saying NATO should have armed Ukraine with nuclear weapons, there is no reason *at all* to assume giving Ukraine more standard weapons and equipment would have done anything but allow Russia to be better prepared for its inevitable invasion.

  2. > “Now we are providing military equipment for the war — back then, we could have provided military equipment to prevent the war,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in an interview published on Saturday.

    I’m an armchair “expert”, but I would assume that Russia would have invaded earlier if there was any indication that NATO was going to arm Ukraine.

  3. Rather than a ceasefire or peace treaty, a land-for-peace deal would be a surrender to the invaders.

  4. Uhm… That is not what Stoltenberg said. He knows the difference all to well. What he said is that NATO could’ve helped to prevent second phase of the war — full-scale invasion.

  5. yeah NATO could have been a bit tougher when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula back in 2014. Maybe not helping more back then is why Putin figured he could have the rest of Ukraine.

  6. DogsSaveTheWorld on

    20/20 hindsight … ain’t it grand?

    If I were to guess, once Trump lost in 2020, Putin concluded that if he waited, increased arms in Ukraine would be a certainty, so he got whole the ‘getting was good’. If Trump was reelected, Trump policy would have continued to weaken Ukraine, and this war would have merely been kicked down the road a few years. It will be interesting to see what plays out when Harris wins.

  7. ChoirBoyComparedToMe on

    Duh. Pisses me off we didn’t do something in 2014 or when the Russian scum shot down a passenger plane.

  8. I’m not too sure what more NATO could’ve done beyond forward deploy troops to Ukraine as tripwires to be honest. But given there was uncertainty and even incredulity from the Ukrainian government that Russia would fully invade, it’s not clear whether they would’ve even been invited to deploy.

    Sure, there’s things individual countries could have done to be tougher on Russia in issues they’ve caused domestically (Litvinenko and Skripal, for example), but it’s extremely difficult to go back to pinpoint exact moments where it would’ve sent Putin and/or Russia on a different trajectory- if indeed there even is any. But forward deploying troops into areas where Russia would have had to engage these troops to achieve any objectives would have almost certainly made Putin think twice

  9. Well all the governments could have done more to avert poverty ,high discrepancies, and a lot more from other problems : Pronetic

  10. Europe*. Europe could have done more to avert Ukraine war. I’m tired of the U.S. getting blamed for Europe’s ignorant pacifism. The Brit’s and the Americans were literally the only ones warning of an impending invasion. And even had troops on the ground training UA armed forces. The rest of Europe blindly looked the other way, living in total denial.

  11. I am no NATO expert however I find it hard that the countries in NATO would all just give equipment to a non NATO member off threat from Russia

    I could see them taking bids to enter? Not to mention COVID was still winding down around the world. Countries weren’t eager to send supplies off