Ukraine seeks to join NATO

[Geaux4it]

Talking about ringing the bell. What will the stumbling cluster stump Obama do now? Meh, never mind

-Geaux


Ukraine seeks to join NATO; defiant Putin compares Kiev to Nazis

(Reuters) - Ukraine called on Friday for full membership in NATO, its strongest plea yet for Western military help, after accusing Russia of sending in armored columns that have driven back its forces on behalf of pro-Moscow rebels.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, defiant as ever, compared Kiev's drive to regain control of its rebellious eastern cities to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in World War Two. He announced that rebels had succeeded in halting it, and proposed that they now permit surrounded Ukrainian troops to retreat.

Speaking to young people at a summer camp, Putin told his countrymen they must be "ready to repel any aggression towards Russia." He described Ukrainians and Russians as "practically one people," language that Ukrainians say dismisses the very existence of their thousand-year-old nation.

The past 72 hours have seen pro-Russian rebels suddenly open a new front and push Ukrainian troops out of a key town in strategic coastal territory along the Sea of Azov. Kiev and Western countries say the reversal was the result of the arrival of armored columns of Russian troops, sent by Putin to prop up a rebellion that would otherwise have been near collapse.

Ukraine seeks to join NATO defiant Putin compares Kiev to Nazis Reuters

 

[JoeB131]

Again, this is our problem, why?

here's an idea. Why don't you and all your redneck buddies start a special brigade, and bring your guns and volunteer to go help the Kiev government? That would be awesome. Or Darwinian.

 

[CitizenSeven]

Yeah, that's a good idea, get involved in a rebellion/civil war. If the euros are so into it, they should just do it, and the US should use the opportunity to disengage from NATO. It's a cold war relic, and just has the US acting as the trained attack dog for europe.

 

[Geaux4it]

Yeah, that's a good idea, get involved in a rebellion/civil war. If the euros are so into it, they should just do it, and the US should use the opportunity to disengage from NATO. It's a cold war relic, and just has the US acting as the trained attack dog for europe.

Count me in on pulling out of NATO. That is the central power for global control.

-Geaux

 

[waltky]

Ukraine lookin' to join NATO?...

Ukraine abandons nonaligned status
Dec 23,`14 -- Ukraine's parliament dropped the nation's nonaligned status Tuesday, possibly paving the way for a bid to join NATO in defiance of the Kremlin's wishes. Russia, meanwhile, finalized a new economic alliance with other former Soviet nations it had vainly hoped Ukraine would join.

The parallel moves reflected new divisions in Europe as Russia-West ties have plummeted to their lowest point since Cold War times over the Ukrainian crisis. The parliament in Kiev passed the bill to drop the nonaligned status in a 303-9 vote, with supporters saying it was justified by Russian aggression toward Ukraine, including the annexation of its Crimean Peninsula in March and Russian support for a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where some 4,700 people have been killed since the spring. But opponents said it will only increase tensions, and Moscow echoed that view. "This is counterproductive, it only heats up the confrontation, creating the illusion that accepting such a law is the road to regulating the deep internal crisis in Ukraine," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The move doesn't mean that Ukraine will apply to join NATO. But Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin told the parliament the law opens up new mechanisms "in the conditions of the current aggression against Ukraine." Ukraine's prospects for NATO membership in the near term appear dim. With its long-underfunded military suffering from the war with the separatists and the country's economy in peril, Ukraine has much to overcome to achieve the stability that the alliance seeks in members. Five NATO countries - Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland - now share relatively short borders on Russia's western outskirts, totaling about 1,300 kilometers (780 miles). Adding Ukraine's 1,500-kilometer (900-mile) border with Russia to that would move the alliance's eastward flank substantially, and put it roughly on the same longitude as Moscow.

An alliance official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with NATO practice, told The Associated Press "our door is open and Ukraine will become a member of NATO if it so requests and fulfils the standards and adheres to the necessary principles." Although Ukraine had pursued NATO membership several years ago, it declared itself a non-bloc country after Russia-friendly Viktor Yanukovych became president in 2010. Yanukovych was driven from power in February after months of street protests that exploded into violence, and was replaced with Western-leaning Petro Poroshenko in May. The Kremlin had sought to persuade Ukraine to join the Eurasian Economic Union, an alliance which Russian President Vladimir Putin finalized Tuesday at a meeting with four other ex-Soviet leaders.

The grouping, which includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, comes to existence on Jan. 1. In addition to free trade, it's to coordinate the members' financial systems and regulate their industrial and agricultural policies along with labor markets and transportation networks. The new alliance immediately showed signs of fracture as the leader of Belarus sharply criticized Moscow for damaging his country's economic interests, breaking the ceremonial veneer. Belarus, sandwiched between Russia and European Union members Poland and Lithuania, has profited handsomely from Moscow's ban on imports of EU food in retaliation to Western sanctions against Russia by boosting imports of food from EU nations and reselling it to Russia.

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See also:

Russia Warns: Any Move to Join NATO Makes Ukraine a 'Potential Enemy'
December 23, 2014 ~ Medvedev also blasts new U.S. sanctions

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s bid to drop the country’s official “non-aligned” status amounts to an application to join NATO and therefore makes Ukraine a “potential enemy” of Russia, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Tuesday. The comment, posted on Medvedev’s Facebook page, was the strongest Russian reaction yet to the move by Ukraine’s new leader to reverse his Moscow-backed predecessor’s 2010 decision formally declaring the country to be non-aligned. Legislation to end the non-aligned policy was introduced in the parliament in Kiev, the Verkhovna Rada, last week. “[The] Ukrainian president has submitted to the Verkhovna Rada a bill on dropping Ukraine’s non-aligned status,” wrote Medvedev. “Essentially, this is a bid to join NATO, which turns Ukraine into a potential enemy of Russia.”

Medvedev also reiterated Russia’s objections to new U.S. legislation, signed by President Obama last Thursday, authorizing military aid to Ukraine and additional sanctions against Russia in response to its intervention in eastern Ukraine. “Our relations with America will be poisoned for decades to come,” he wrote, equating the Ukraine Freedom Support Act with the Jackson-Vanik amendment. (The application of the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment to Russia linked trade ties to free emigration for Jews and other religious minorities. Obama signed the law repealing it two years ago.) Although the Ukraine Freedom Support Act is now law, Obama said after signing it he has no plans at this time to extend sanctions under it.

Medvedev said that the two developments – Ukraine’s plan to abandon formal non-alignment and the new U.S. sanctions legislation – “will have extremely deplorable aftermaths and our country will have to react to them.” Ukraine’s non-aligned status law prohibits it from seeking membership in any military-political alliance. When Poroshenko submitted draft legislation last week to change it, he said the policy had been a “mistake” and was proven ineffective in the face of foreign aggression – a reference to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and other destabilizing actions in eastern Ukraine this year. Poroshenko said the law change would not mean entering NATO, “but we are resuming Euro-Atlantic integration.” He urged the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada to advance the legislation without delay. Even if the non-alignment policy is dropped, the road to NATO membership will be a long and uphill one for Kiev.

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[JoeB131]

Stupid idea.

What happens between the Ukraine and Russia is none of our business, and we need to stop pretending it is.

 

[Old Rocks]

There are certain internal criteria for a nation to join NATO. I doubt that the Ukraine meets that criteria. There is a reason for NATO, and that reason has not gone away, only changed in nature. Pulling out of NATO would be a disaster for all of us, including the Russians.

 

[Sunni Man]

NATO should have been disbanded when the Cold War ended in the 1990's with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But much to the chagrin of the emasculated Russians, the US and Europe expanded NATO to include several of the former USSR client states.

Now after several decades of humiliation. Russia has clawed its way back towards its former glory under the leadership of an ultra nationalist named Putin.

And what was initially a victory for the west has now turned into Cold War II the sequel because of the idiotic expansion of NATO by the western powers. ......

.

 

[Mad Scientist]

Ukrainians and Russians ARE "practically one people" because Kiev used to be the Russian Capital.

But of course, Americans don't know this, and may never know because it isn't on NFL.com or WorldStarHipHop.com.

Why we gotta' f*ck with the Ukraine and Russia? Because the Vice President's son is on the Board of a Ukrainian Gas Company? We gotta' put our Military in harms way because of THAT? F*ck no!

 

[georgephillip]

What happens between the Ukraine and Russia is none of our business, and we need to stop pretending it is.

Wouldn't we first have to know what role the US government played in facilitating regime change in Ukraine last February? If it turns out the US instigated the removal of Yanukovych in order to create instability in the region, we can't pretend it's none of our business.
"Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity?

"And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what’s called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

"These are urgent questions.

"The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war – with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China.

"This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003."

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