Would this not of been the best possible solution for Russia, Ukraine and the bordering countries regarding NATO that could of worked for all?

[User13579862]

One of Putins main vocalised objectives is preventing Ukraine from joining NATO (and obtaining nuclear weapons) along with other countries bordering Russia. The issue now for many bordering countries is their wanting to join NATO to protect their own borders from invasion by Russia as the current invasion in Ukraine shows they are not fully safe from Russia either way. Therefore, surely the solution to protect all could of been achieved with the following:

All bordering countries that want to, NATO and Russia sign a treaty of sorts agreeing that none of the bordering countries involved will join NATO or procure any nuclear weapons. However, if Russia attacks any of these bordering countries again, or NATO themselves, then it automatically triggers all of the bordering countries involved to instantly become a NATO member.

This way, if Putins objective really is to secure Russias border from NATO then this is the best solution for him as only he and his actions can then trigger them joining. At the same time it protects the involved bordering countries from the fear of Russian invasion and not being a part of NATO.

Of course there would be more to it than simply the above as they would have to account for what exactly would count as a Russian attack to prevent just anybody from breaking the treaty, amongst many other smaller issues, but surely that can be accounted for if everyone agreed to the above.

I know that many seem to believe that NATO is the excuse and not the reason but if that’s really true, then by not accepting the above, surely Russia is showing their hand regarding future intentions if they didn’t agree to it? The same goes for NATO if they didn’t.

There are obviously other issues to account for but surely the above could of been a big enough win for everyone, including Putin, that palatable enough terms could be sorted regarding everything else. So what’s the big flaw in the above for it not to seemingly of been on the table? Of course it could of been and we just weren’t informed about it but if so then wouldn’t we be going about things differently if it had been rejected?

"I wouldn’t agree that it takes away a countries sovereignty if they willingly signed up as they believe it to be beneficial to them. "

But they're"willingly" signing up to it because if they don't then Russia obliterates them.

If your bigger stronger neighbour says "share your car with me or else I'll just take it completely" and there are no police to protect you, you haven't willingly agreed to share your car, you've been threatened and dictated to.

@daimbarsatemydogsbone

I know I'll get slated for this but I am having a little smile about the idea that someone on MN has the simple answer to this issue - if only the countries "would of" thought of it.

Indeed!

I think it's great that the OP posted her thoughts and ideas, we are ALL learning so much at the moment and no-one just no-one should slate anyone else for being interested and concerned.

I agree OP. Not necessarily with the whole idea but that NATO US etc could have called Putin's bluff and offered a deal to avoid war. If Putin rejected it it would have been very hard for him to justify the decision to invade to his own people and internationally. As things stand it looks like the US in particular was happy to allow war - they really talked it up and didn't even try to negotiate. Putin's the one who actually invaded of course but more should definitely have been attempted to stop it.

but more should definitely have been attempted to stop it

Such as?

(Genuine question, remembering everything that was happening from late last year onwards, I'm wondering what else could have been done)

@Aishah231

I agree OP. Not necessarily with the whole idea but that NATO US etc could have called Putin's bluff and offered a deal to avoid war. If Putin rejected it it would have been very hard for him to justify the decision to invade to his own people and internationally. As things stand it looks like the US in particular was happy to allow war - they really talked it up and didn't even try to negotiate. Putin's the one who actually invaded of course but more should definitely have been attempted to stop it.

But it’s nothing to do with NATO.

@Aishah231

I agree OP. Not necessarily with the whole idea but that NATO US etc could have called Putin's bluff and offered a deal to avoid war. If Putin rejected it it would have been very hard for him to justify the decision to invade to his own people and internationally. As things stand it looks like the US in particular was happy to allow war - they really talked it up and didn't even try to negotiate. Putin's the one who actually invaded of course but more should definitely have been attempted to stop it.

How would it have been harder to justify it to the Russian people? The Russians in general believe Ukraine is part of Russia. They don’t think they are invading. And Putin doesn’t have to justify anything, certainly not to the people. That’s not how it works in Russia. It’s irrelevant what the US thinks and it’s not up to them to negotiate. That’s up to the Ukrainians. The Russians invaded in 2014 and no country did anything.

No because these conflicts are rarely anything to do with the said objectives. Follow the money and look at who is benefiting from this. That’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s just the way realpolitik works - big pharma had their payday recently. Now it’s the turn of the arms industry. And oil industry gets a nice bonus too.

@cornflakedreams nailed it.

Looks like Budapest agreement following demise of Soviet Union is worth less than the paper it was written on.

Ukraine got shafted big time and nobody’s willing to directly tackle Putin because of possible repercussions. He doesn’t care. He backed himself into a corner now. What next?

His idea of restoring former Russia with all countries entwined with it is crazy.

As a child living in one of the satellite countries I can tell you it was shit and I would hate for this to happen again.

A few observations, some probably tangential -

Putin demanded that NATO preemptively rule out Ukraine ever joining. NATO wouldn’t. Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty (1949), NATO's charter, says membership is open to any “European state in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area". And the NATO- Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security (1997) explicitly states that Russia has no veto over any alliance decisions and reiterates the "open door policy".

Ukraine had nuclear weapons - it "inherited" 3,000 warheads when the USSR broke up in 1991 - but relinquished them in 1994 in return for assurances from the “official” nuclear powers that they would respect Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity and protect/defend Ukraine against any use of or threat of force. Russia violated that agreement (the Budapest Memorandum which FrenchBoule mentioned above) in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea and via meddling in Donetsk and Luhansk, and blew it to smithereens in 2022. (However, this isn’t explicitly a military agreement - it basically says the responsible parties should curb the aggressor via the UN Security Council, which is useless when the aggressor has a veto.)

Ukraine also signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1994 and reaffirmed in 2017 its pledge to remain a non-nuclear state. This means Ukraine can't develop its own nuclear weapons or acquire them from an outside source. Every European country is signed up to this treaty except Belarus, which had also inherited nuclear weapons from the USSR and relinquished them in the '90s, and which withdrew from NPT after Russia invaded Ukraine, stating that it would ask Russia for nuclear weapons if NATO moved weapon to countries bordering Belarus.

That's a reference to the controversial NATO weapons sharing programme, which lets some NPT signatories "store" US-owned and controlled nuclear weapons on their own territory. (NATO says this doesn't violate NPT because the additional countries don't "have" the weapons, they're just holding them for a friend.) But anyway, the 1997 Founding Act agreed by NATO and Russia also prohibits NATO from "sharing" nuclear weapons with any members joining after that time. That was put in place in the run-up to Poland - which borders Russia via Kaliningrad - joining NATO along with Hungary and Czech Republic in 1999. It covers every country that was in the USSR's sphere of influence except East Germany, who joined NATO in 1990 via reunification with member West Germany. NATO has never violated those terms.

Russia’s invasions of Ukraine and of Georgia in 2008 (same year their acceptance as a candidate was announced) effectively paused progress toward NATO membership of those countries because of the "no war/no border disputes" rules. So If Putin cares about NATO on his borders, he knows invasions during the accession process stop the clock. But now Zelinskyy has backed off on NATO and Putin demands that Ukraine cease all military activities, commit to remaining a neutral state forever (which settles the NATO question), cede Crimea to Russia, and recognise the independence of the breakaway republics. So far, he hasn't offered to pay for the damage.

Hi, myself and others are running a thread where we try to go through these kinds of issues in detail, there are some excellent posts on there about NATO and explaining why this was not the issue.

Downnative in particular has done a lot of posts on NATO here.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/4497259-Ukraine-and-Russia-Answering-common-questions-and-issues

@WhatsGoingOn2022 Hi I can't read through 36 pages on that thread but i have a very quick question for you...

Why did Putin take 10 months to build a relatively small force, preparing them in the full glare of the 'west on the borders of Ukraine if it wasn't all about NATO ?
Surely he would have prepared far away from Ukraine, then in a matter of weeks transported his troops 'west, attacked brutally and quickly, long before Ukraine had time to be re supplied and rearmed by the West.

It doesn't make sense, maybe he did expect the 'West to back down on NATO membership.. we will never know.

The snidey, superior comments aren’t to do with the debate, I don’t think. I believe they’re to do with the colloquial use of ‘could of/would of’ instead of ‘could have/would have’.

16 countries border Russia... some are quite happy with the status quo. Some have regimes that are beyond questionable. Not sure this move would be popular in Kazakstan, nor with NATO.

[quote Alexandra2001]@WhatsGoingOn2022 Hi I can't read through 36 pages on that thread but i have a very quick question for you...

Why did Putin take 10 months to build a relatively small force, preparing them in the full glare of the 'west on the borders of Ukraine if it wasn't all about NATO ?
Surely he would have prepared far away from Ukraine, then in a matter of weeks transported his troops 'west, attacked brutally and quickly, long before Ukraine had time to be re supplied and rearmed by the West.

It doesn't make sense, maybe he did expect the 'West to back down on NATO membership.. we will never know.[/quote]
Hi this is why I would recommend reading and engaging in detail. All of these points are dealt with. But to give a very quick summary:

Yes we will know, yes people do know what is actually happening. Anyone who tries to claim this invasion was due to any concerns over NATO doesn't know what they are talking about. That is not the dynamic at play. Ukraine joining NATO in the near future has never been at play as they don't fulfil the requirements at this point.

You will note that regardless of the troops build up, the west was not well placed to respond and largely in detail that this was happening. Russia is huge, there is no option to not get troops together and organise supply lines ahead of an invasion. The timing was planned in advance in coordination with China, who wanted them to wait until after the Winter Olympics.

They did go in for a planned quick and brutal fight, their plans were for a swift 15 day decisive war that would topple the government. They planned to use a Blitzkrieg approach, but their air forces were incompetent and their ground forces unable to advance swiftly due to logistics. Now they are stuck, momentum has been lost, they are facing far more resistance than expected.

Russia have lost maybe 10,000 troops, that was never a part of the plan. They have lost literally billions of dollars of military equipments. It's simply untrue to paint this as them not sending in major forces. They have lost three extremely senior commanders at present, they are now recruiting foreign mercenaries due to their failures on the battlefield.

Simply put, the Russian army is overstretched, has terrible logistics, a poor strategy and are fighting an increasingly well-armed Ukraine. There is no grand conspiracy here, Russia planned this. But the corruption of the military (poor care of machinery, money siphoned off for personal use) caused this failure.

Why did Putin take 10 months to build a relatively small force, preparing them in the full glare of the 'west on the borders of Ukraine if it wasn't all about NATO ?

I’m no expert, but I’d say because nato was a handy excuse for him - which you’ve swallowed. He wants Ukraine, he thinks it’s Russian, and he thought NATO was weak. After all, it didn’t intervene in 2014. He thought it would be a walk in the park - like last time. He didn’t expect to need a huge force.

[quote User13579862]@daimbarsatemydogsbone

I never said it was a simple answer or that I was the only person to ever think of it. I asked for opinions precisely because I knew it wasn’t as simple as the above and I wanted to understand where my thinking was lacking so I could understand better. How is that something to mock?[/quote]
She wasn't mocking your post she was pointing out your incorrect grammar.

I found the half hour programme on radio 4, Ukraine, how we got here very interesting in getting a better understanding of what's going on. The NATO issue seems to only be an excuse.
You're certainly not unreasonable in trying to think of solutions and I've been struck by how diplomacy and negotiation appear to be lost arts, also by the fact that the large players love to intervene in some countries but not Russia.

They did didn’t they? It’s called the Budapest Memorandum. Russia tore it up when it suited them and we’re not coming out well either.

@WhatsGoingOn2022 @daisypond

I haven't swallowed anything, Putin needs standing up too now, which funnily enough, those who say "nothing to do with Nato" wont do.

He will keep escalating until we do, by which time it may be too late.

There were also plenty of experts before the invasion saying we need to address Putins "alleged" concerns seriously.

But it was never offered, so of course everyone and his dog will now state its a smokescreen, no one now is hardly likely to say oh our bad...

Op it sounds interesting but it's reactive , not Pro active. Putin is always calling the shots.

I agree about the sneery comments going around at the moment.
The very self important experts who don't know any more than anyone else putting people down for chatting on a chat forum