The West is attacking Russia
“The war which we are trying to stop and which was launched against us using Ukrainian people of course has influenced the policy of Russia...We will not rely any more on any partner in the West. “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at geopolitical conference in India on March 3, 2023. The remark raised a laugh in the audience.
“It was they (Kyiv regime) who unleashed the war and we used force and still use it to stop it.”
“The United States and NATO rapidly deployed their army bases and secret biological laboratories near the borders of our country and prepared the Kyiv regime subject to them and the Ukrainian people they had enslaved, for a big war.” Russian president Vladimir Putin in his address to the Federal Assembly of Russiain Moscow on February 21, 2023. The remarks raised applaus.
So, according to these narratives, Russia is the innocent victim of aggressive, evil, satanic, depraved, hostile,russophobe etc. collective West.
French General Michel Yakovleff, who is also a NATO General at Supreme Headquarters Allied PowersEurope (SHAPE) contradicts Russian propaganda:
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has not militarized any territory beyond the defunct Iron Curtain except for a trip-wire presence. Even after Poland, Czechia and Hungary became NATO members in 1999, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia acquired membership in 2004 and Albania and Kroatia in 2009, no further militarization took place. Only when in 2014 Russia trampled on all contracts that they had signed by annexing Crimea and by fomenting separatism in the Donbas, a massive influx of NATO soldiers, weapons and stockpiles of ammunitions were stationed nearRussia’s borders. All these countries urgently postulated the NATO Enhanced Forward Presence for fear of a Russian invasion.
The General rebuffs the argument that NATO lured, urged or forced the former European Soviet satellites into the organization: When in 2008 Ukraine and Georgia applied for NATO membership none of the two countries was ready to fulfill the conditions for joining the alliance. A country in war, partly occupied or living in uncertain boundaries cannot join NATO. Further the public opinion of an applicant state must be fervently in favor of membership and willing to contribute a considerable effort in order to merit the mutual defense provided in article 5 of the statutes. Since at that time the two countries were far from readiness, Germany and France rejected the applications. Consequently the Americans can not force any country into NATO against the vote of even the smallest member state. The vote must be unanimous. It is a question of principle, not of a political decision by the dominating power.
Yakovleff holds that having neighbors does not represent a menace. Rationally thinking neighbors live together in peace. Only irrational paranoid Putin deduces from his own expansionist intension that everybody else must be equally aggressiv.
General Yakovleff argues further: By helping Ukraine so little in 2014 (after Crimea annexation and Donbass instigation) NATO has encouraged Putin for the 2022 full-scale war: He concluded from the West’s weak reaction that the disunited alliance would further refrain from interfering.
The General holds: It is not NATO that helps Ukraine but NATO countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Slovakia, Denmark etc. All the 50 countries participating in the Ramstein Air Base meetings among them non-NATO members like Morocco, Israel, Japan, Sweden etc. help Ukraine.Which one of all these countries had planned to invade Russia? - None!
Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was a great friend of Putin. French President Emmanuel Macron received Putin with great honor in Versailles Palace in May 2017. The two leaders inaugurated an exhibition marking 300 years of FrancoRussian diplomatic ties. Macron pleased Putin by showing him a painting of Tsar Peter the Great’s voyage to France in 1717.Everybody in Europe held Russia in high estime. The more reserved Americans watched and wondered. Trade was a win-win event. All had the sincere wish to be in good understanding with the Russians. No leader in the West ever thought of attacking Russia.