By Ilya Tsukanov
France has reportedly dropped a decade-and-a-half-old objection to prospective Ukrainian membership in NATO, ostensibly in the interests of forcing Russia to the negotiating table amid Kiev’s flagging counteroffensive. Paris’ move is not only foolhardy, but highly dangerous, a pair of former US military officers have told Sputnik.
But now, ahead of the long-awaited NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania in July, Macron has apparently agreed to dangle alliance membership before Kiev as a “security guarantee” and “means of influencing” the conflict and forcing Moscow and Kiev “to the negotiating table.”
Naive, Dangerous Step
“It’s not going to make any sense. Putin is not going to agree to that. So it’s not going to happen. I mean they can try to put [Ukraine] into NATO, but then they’re escalating the conflict, and we could have a possible nuclear war,” Vallely told Sputnik. Western powers have “got to back off” and “understand that that’s not going to happen and it should not happen,” the observer stressed.
“Macron’s statement that he thinks French support for Ukraine’s membership in NATO will bring Russia to the negotiating table is absurd. It is Biden, the UK, and Zelensky that have refused all of Russia’s attempts to negotiate a mutually acceptable compromise peace agreement to end the war since April 2022. Were it not for the Biden administration’s decision to urge Ukraine to repudiate its tentative peace agreement with Russia and continue sending military and financial assistance to Ukraine, the war would have ended 14 months ago, and a couple hundred thousand Russian and Ukrainian lives would have been saved,” Pyne told Sputnik.