NATO and its eyes on Ukraine
After the collapse of the Iron Curtain and subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has never been subtle in its mission to bring into its fold the majority of countries that used to be in the eastern bloc. NATO won over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 2004.
However, NATO has always had its eyes on Ukraine, a pursuit that has provoked Russia deeply over the years.
With the persistent Russian invasion and support for rebels, Ukraine finally tilted toward the Atlantic bloc. In 2019, the constitution of Ukraine was amended with the addition of parts indicating the country’s imminent membership of NATO and the European Union (EU).
For Russia, the move was a red line in the sand as it sees Ukraine’s romance with NATO as a bombardment by its Western enemies across numerous sides. And when the topic was raised again at the 2021 Brussel Summit, Russia intensified its move to bring Ukraine to its knees before it walked into the arms of NATO.
Putin said Kremlin will not allow “any further NATO moves eastward and the deployment of weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory”.
He insisted that Russians and Ukrainians “were one people – a single whole,” adding that the crisis is the “result of deliberate efforts by those forces that have always sought to undermine our unity”.
In December 2021, Putin warned NATO that deploying weapons or soldiers into Ukraine would cross a “red line” for Russia and trigger a strong response from the Kremlin.
The tension boiled over with the new year, and it erupted into a war on Thursday, February 24, 2022.
The US and its allies then took a wide range of actions in the following weeks intended to punish Moscow for the invasion, including harsh new sanctions and export controls aimed at imposing severe costs on the Russian economy.
Biden also banned Russian aircraft from US airspace, joining a growing number of countries who have closed their skies to Russia. The US and its allies have also agreed to release 60 million barrels of oil from their reserves.
The US will also prohibit American dollar transactions with the Russian central bank and fully block the Russian direct investment fund to prevent Russia from mitigating some of the effects of the sanctions.
The punitive steps taken by the US and her alliance with the sanctions seems to have pushed Putin to take the actions which the west say is retaliatory.
Watch This Space!
May God bring peace to Ukraine, Amen.
SOURCE – Emerald News, CNN
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