A recent attempt by the West to “confine” to Ukraine the current Russian aggression came with a missile strike (15 November 2022). NATO’s official assessment of this “incident” was: “Missile landing [in Poland] was not a ‘deliberate’ Russian attack.”
It is, however, realistic to share the unembellished position that Moscow, during this massive missile attack on Ukraine, also delivered a “fishing” strike on Poland to probe NATO’s reaction and readiness to implement its “sacrosanct” Article 5 about defending “every inch” of NATO’s territory against any aggressor. It would be Russia in this case. Another plausible reason for this “incident” was a Russian attempt to provoke a quarrel between Poland and Ukraine.
So much for a “lesson learned” by the West again.
In view of this, Ukraine would be prudent to keep optimizing its defense capabilities to the maximum – NOT EXCLUDING THE RENEWAL OF ITS TACTICAL NUCLEAR POTENTIAL. As a thoughtful world leader once stated, a nation’s best friend and ally is always ITS OWN ARMED FORCES.
Relevant reminders
- As part of the 1990s international agreement known as the “Budapest Memorandum” (1994) Ukraine relinquished its nuclear arsenal and was forced to transfer it to Russia “in exchange for assurances of security, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.” The guarantors that signed the Budapest Memorandum were the United States, Great Britain, and Russia on one end, and Ukraine on the receiving end. So much for the “assurances”.
- Due to the US-West’s strategic myopia, complacency and opportunism, Ukraine at that time was subjected to outright political blackmail, which directly led to Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine starting in 2014.
- When last October (2022) another wave of missiles from Russia hit Ukraine, the wreckage of one of them was that of a Kh-55 weapon – a Ukrainian–made subsonic cruise missile originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead. And it is precisely this type of cruise missile – with which Moscow is now bombing Ukraine – that Ukraine was forced by the West to transfer to Russia in the 1990s!
- A Russian resident of the town of Borovsk (Russia) called Alexei, 32 (who refused to give his surname), succinctly summarized Moscow’s historical mantra about Ukraine: “Ukraine is not on our side but against us, and we don’t need Ukraine to exist.”
The New York Times, 17 December 2022
It is now the prime duty of the US-NATO-EU triad, both moral and strategic for the sake of the security of the free world, to right their past blunders by supporting Ukraine
tangibly to the maximum for as long as it takes, regardless of the supposed Western
“fatigue” with the war in Ukraine and outright diversionary calls for appeasement with an aggressive terrorist state like Russia.
Oleh Romanyschyn
Jan12, 2023