MUST EASE TENSION

PRIOR to 1989 NATO’s military was over 3,500 miles from the Russia border after the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was reunited.

Then the fall of the Russian Federation happened.

The West took advantage of these events and invited many of the former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO, including Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.

Is it then any wonder that Russia is now worried that if the Ukraine were allowed to join NATO then NATO would be virtually on the Russian border?

I believe that the West’s mistake was to allow these former Warsaw Pact countries to join NATO.

They should have been invited, with the West’s help, to form their own Eastern Block Military Pact.

This would have stood between NATO’s military and Russia and that country’s military.

Now as there is growing tension, China has thrown its support behind Russia.

Perhaps the politicians should remember what Joe Galloway who wrote the book “We were soldiers once...and young” about Vietnam.

When the politicians f*** up soldiers die.

Russia now has 100,000 soldiers and hundreds of tanks on the Russian, Ukrainian border.

If they invade the Ukraine it will be, I believe, a blitzkrieg attack that will overpower the Western and Ukrainian forces within days or even hours.

God forbid that, as it could end up as a nuclear conflict.

The West has to tell Russia that the Ukraine will not be invited or allowed to join NATO now or in the future.

This would perhaps go a long way to easing this tension.

A.P. Moxham, Harwood bar, Great Harwood