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NATO: The alliance that should have been dissolved
NATO backing the Ukrainian military is about as sensible as Russia's support for paramilitary forces
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko gave NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen the Order of Liberty, Ukraine's highest award for foreign nationals [AP]
Ian Klinke is a researcher at the University of Oxford.
Story highlights
Russia's disrespect for Ukrainian sovereignty has captivated the Western media for months. The focus on Moscow's bullish behavior has, however, obscured both NATO's recent attempts of joining the Ukrainian proxy war and its long-term strategy of Eastern expansion. The upcoming summit in Wales is only the most recent reminder that NATO should have been disbanded long ago. Western journalists and think tankers are increasingly telling us that Russia is re-creating a bipolar order in Europe. The Kremlin's support for separatists in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine has sparked accusations that Russia is breathing new life into a confrontation that Europe thought to have overcome 25 years ago. Yet, while both the 2008 Russo-Georgian war and the Kremlin's involvement in the 2014 Ukrainian civil war show that Russia
Russia's disrespect for Ukrainian sovereignty has captivated the Western media for months. The focus on Moscow's bullish behaviour has, however, obscured both NATO's recent attempts of joining the Ukrainian proxy war and its long-term strategy of Eastern expansion. The upcoming summit in Wales is only the most recent reminder that NATO should have been disbanded long ago. Western journalists and think tankers are increasingly telling us that Russia is re-creating a bipolar order in Europe. The Kremlin's support for separatists in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine has sparked accusations that Russia is breathing new life into a confrontation that Europe thought to have overcome 25 years ago. Yet, while both the 2008 Russo-Georgian war and the Kremlin's involvement in the 2014 Ukrainian civil war show that Russia is an important source of regional instability, it is not the only one. Western commentators often reduce NATO's involvement in Ukraine to that of a passive bystander, but such a view is highly misleading. Over the last months, the alliance has sent fighter planes to Eastern Europe and increased its naval presence in the Black and Baltic Seas. NATO has unilaterally suspended its military and civilian cooperation with Russia and its deputy secretary general has downgraded Russia from "partner" to "more of an adversary". Most controversially, NATO is wrapping up an aid package to modernise the Ukrainian army and is therefore fast becoming, like Russia, an active party in the Ukrainian civil war.
Inside Story - What are Russia's plans for eastern Ukraine?
While NATO has so far been careful not to pass heavy armoury to Kiev, the alliance has neither ruled out individual members from sending such weapons nor from participating in military exercises on Ukrainian soil - even during the ongoing war. Grateful for such allegiance, Kiev has recently decorated NATO's outgoing Secretary General Anders Rasmussen with the Order of Liberty, Ukraine's highest award for foreign nationals. In return, Ukraine's President Poroshenko has received the honour of being invited to NATO's September summit in Wales as the only non-NATO head of state. This week's much-awaited summit in Wales could bring a decisive boost to the North Atlantic alliance's new proxy war. Already, the secretary general has announced his intention to beef up NATO's rapid response force and to encourage increased military spending throughout the alliance. He has also called for permanent military bases to be installed in NATO's Eastern members. The alliance has been careful not to call such bases "permanent" because they would breach a 1997 promise to Russia, but they will send an unambiguous signal to the Kremlin nevertheless. "The point is that any potential aggressor should know that if they were to even think of an attack against a NATO ally," Rasmussen recently explained, "they will meet NATO troops." Beating the war drum The most significant source of support for the new line comes from NATO's most powerful member. In early June, Washington announced a $1bn fund to bolster the wider US military presence in Europe. US President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama has promised Poland and other Eastern European NATO members "unbreakable commitments", backed both by "the strongest alliance in the world" and "the most powerful military in history". But it is not just Washington that is beating the war drum. Today, politicians like Poland's Radek Sikorski, Lithuania's Dalia Grybauskaite or Estonia's Toomas Hendrik Ilves are pursuing a similar line. The very states that were eager to host the controversial Missile Defence Shield in the 2000s are now lobbying for permanent military bases on their territory. Even Germany, sometimes considered a lethargic member of NATO, has stocked up troops in the Polish headquarters of the Multinational Corps North East, a facility concerned with the defence of NATO's Eastern territorial border. While these recent events have often been read as mere reactions to Russia's imperial reflexes, it is important not to divorce them from their historical context. A crucial key to NATO's current investment in Ukraine is the alliance's longstanding identity crisis. Unlike the Warsaw Pact, which was disbanded in 1991, the North Atlantic alliance has survived the end of the Cold War. It has had to legitimate its further institutional existence in two distinct if rather contradictory ways. Firstly, it replaced its Cold War policy of "forward defence" with that of "forward presence" (non-linear defence lines, scattered across the globe). This new mission was powerfully demonstrated by a number of "out of area" wars against Serbia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001 and Libya in 2011, but also by combating pirates off the Horn of Africa. Given the fiasco in Afghanistan, this strategy is now widely considered to have failed.
NATO: Russia supplying Ukraine rebels tanks
Secondly, it embarked on an ambitious enlargement agenda to Eastern Europe that saw the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland enter the alliance in 1999. Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia and the three Baltic states followed in 2004 as well as Croatia and Albania in 2009. NATO has furthermore developed close ties with a number of post-Soviet republics, particularly with Georgia and Ukraine, both of which have in the past declared an interest in joining the alliance. NATO has held military exercises with these states and recently reiterated its continued support for Georgia's plans to gain NATO membership. Tbilisi now builds units according to NATO standards so as to ensure interoperability in the future. It is this policy of regional involvement that is directly at odds with the alliance's global mission. Indeed, it has helped to re-create the very linear defence line it claims to have abandoned in the early 1990s, but now further to the East. In response to such allegations, NATO has held that its expansion to the former Warsaw Pact and its flirtation with the post-Soviet republics was never directed against Moscow, but merely an attempt to stabilise democratic transitions in these states. Russia has never quite believed that version of events, reminding the alliance that its most powerful member state once gave Russia an informal promise that NATO would not expand eastwards. Perhaps more interestingly, NATO's new members were also never fully committed to the story that NATO enlargement had nothing to do with Russia. It should be remembered that it was anti-Soviet politicians like Poland's Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel who originally lobbied for their countries to join NATO. What should have been done 25 years ago In the run up to the September summit it seems as if NATO's 25-year identity crisis might finally have been resolved. As the US Secretary of State John Kerry has recently put it, the war in Ukraine has called NATO "back to the role that this alliance was originally created to perform". As both NATO and Russia seem to be using the current Ukrainian crisis to re-enact their Cold War roles, a debate on the alliance's purpose is more than timely. Today's critics of NATO frequently face charges of Kremlin apologism, quite in the same way that the anti-nuclear and peace protestors were ritually accused of being Soviet puppets during the Cold War. Yet, to take a critical stance on NATO does not mean to embrace Putin. Unlike what some commentators have argued, we do not need more understanding for a nationalist, militarist and autocrat whose new Eastern Monroe doctrine is destabilising Eastern Europe while isolating his country. Instead, we need a better grasp of NATO and its drive to further militarise of Eastern Europe. This alliance is currently aiding a nationalist regime that did very little to diffuse its ethnic tensions in the aftermath of the Ukrainian revolution and that is now shelling its own citizens. Backing the Ukrainian military is about as sensible as Russia's support for paramilitary forces in Eastern Ukraine. The only reasonable response to the current crisis is a radical rethinking of European security that starts with the realisation that the continent has two problems: Russia and NATO. The West cannot disband Russia, but it can finally start a process that it should have started in 1991: the dissolution of its antiquated military alliance. This solution is admittedly counter-intuitive in the light of Russia's current assertiveness, but it is ultimately the only sane step towards a more peaceful continent. Perhaps it is important to remember that it was the Soviet Union under Gorbachev and not the West that called off the Cold War. Interestingly, this happened at a time when Washington was excessively funding terrorist paramilitaries and freedom fighters around the world while showing very little respect for the sovereignty of certain Latin American neighbours. Ian Klinke is a researcher at the University of Oxford.
Source:Al Jazeera
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CANADA- ON TARGET: NATO troops in Baltic could provoke Russia
SCOTT TAYLOR Published June 12, 2016 - 3:41pm
All the old warhorses in Ottawa are abuzz over the fact that NATO has apparently singled out Canada to provide troops for a new deterrent force in Eastern Europe.
According to media reports, NATO officials are looking for Canada to deploy about 1,000 combat soldiers to a base in Latvia on a permanent basis. These Canadian soldiers would be part of a joint German, British and U.S. Baltic deployment totalling 4,000 troops.
The more hawkish pundits breathlessly refer to the Baltic States — Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia — as NATO’s eastern “flank” (rather than using the words border or boundary), implying that a war with Russia is already underway.
Since April 2014, Canada has been sporadically deploying small contingents of combat troops to Eastern Europe for brief training exercises. These rotating missions were part of Canada’s contribution to NATO’s Operation Reassurance, which was triggered by Russia’s annexation of the Crimea and the severe unrest in Eastern Ukraine.
At that juncture, the Chicken Littles were convinced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had begun his quest for world domination, and NATO needed to rush men to the ramparts of Fortress Europe. Our little combat contingents, usually not more than 200 soldiers at a time, have since then dutifully conducted training operations in Poland and the Baltic.
Thankfully, the sky has not fallen. Putin’s annexation of the Crimea followed a bloodless occupation and a referendum wherein 96.77 per cent of the population chose to join Russia rather than remain a part of the internally collapsing Ukraine.
In truly hypocritical fashion, then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the Crimea referendum as a sham and burbled, “You can’t just redraw the map of Europe.” This would be the same Hilary Clinton whose presidential hubby Bill led 1999’s 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Serbia in order to create an independent Kosovo. That bloody intervention cost the lives of thousands of Serbian and Albanian citizens, and when Kosovo did proclaim unilateral independence in 2007, it was done without any referendum.
Two years after Russia’s annexation, more than 80 per cent of Crimean poll respondents reported that they remain happy with their decision to secede from Ukraine.
In contrast, nine years after Kosovo’s declared independence and 17 years after the NATO intervention, residents are voting with their feet: Considered the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, tens of thousands of Kosovars out of a population of less than two million have joined the mobs of migrants seeking a better life in Western Europe.
Furthermore, Putin’s land grab in the Crimea was something of a strategic necessity given the February 2014 overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych in Kiev and the subsequent civil unrest across Ukraine. The Crimea was historically Russian and even after Ukraine separated from the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Black Sea Fleet continued to lease from Ukraine its navy base in Sevastopol. The current lease was not due to expire until 2040, but Putin could not risk a pro-Western regime in Kiev threatening his fleet’s expulsion.
In the subsequent interval, Putin has made no further claims on additional Ukrainian territory. He has not annexed the rebellious pro-Russian eastern provinces and Russian foreign policy remains committed to the breakaway, self-declared independent republics of Donetsk and Luhansk remaining within a Ukrainian federation — albeit with increased autonomy.
Also, against all predictions by those longing for a good old Cold War-style showdown with the Russkies, the Minsk II ceasefire agreement continues to hold, with only occasional minor infractions by both sides.
For NATO to move 4,000 combat troops right up to Russia’s Baltic borders at this moment has to be seen as a deliberate provocation of Russia, just as things seem to be stabilizing. The Colonel Blimp Brigade may be bulging with pride that Canada was asked to contribute to this force, but maybe a better question would be why are the other European NATO members staying away in droves?
Shocked by the clinical efficiency with which Crimea rejoined Russia, the United States is planning to disband NATO and transfer control of its bases in Europe to a new military command directly under the Pentagon’s thumb.
NATO looked menacing in its heyday. Drawing by Sergei Yolkin
NATO’s inability to act in the face of the Russian military’s quick and bloodless integration of the Crimean peninsula was seen as a defining low in the 65-year old military organisation’s history. “We thought if we can’t protect our own guys in Ukraine, then what can we do?" General Patrick Varkrimnelle, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told USA Today.
NATO constitutes a system of collective defence in Europe whereby its member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party. “Most of the senior European member states were lukewarm to a strong and united response to Moscow,” General Varkrimnelle said. “If they are not interested in mobilising against Russian threats, then there’s no point in us sticking around. At least if the Pentagon is not weighed down by our European allies it would be able to take a stand when it matters.”
Others were more forthright. “Look we can’t fight Russia or China, it’s simply out of the question,” said General Barry McKilla, the former Vice Chief of Staff of the US Air Force. “At the same time there are hardly any small countries left for NATO to bomb.”
According to General McKilla, all the anti-American dictators are long gone. “Sure Kim Jong-un is still around and occasionally he threatens the West, but the North Koreans have nuclear weapons, so we can't flatten Kim like we did Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein,” he said.
NATO’s military command will be transferred out of Brussels, the current headquarters, to a destination in North America. Canada will continue to be part of the new organization and NATO insiders say Mexico could be invited. “That will paint the entire continent a uniform shade of blue, providing some relief to the American right that is currently traumatised by the US military’s impotence against Russia,” said Robert Krauthammer, Director, Whitesuper Foundation, Mississippi.
Most Canadian and many US members of the military are already grumbling at Mexico’s inclusion. Spanish will most likely be an official language of the new alliance. “I don’t want to learn Spanish, with its inverted question marks at the beginning of a sentence, in addition to my normal quota of compulsory studies,” said Corporal Max Thickhead at the US Air Force’s Pensacola Air Base. “I was half-way through my German class when I received the news that NATO is shipping out of Europe. It is the devil’s tongue, so difficult, and now Spanish.”
However, language studies are the least of NATO’s problems. Several East European member states are unhappy with the alliance’s exit and have threatened to lay siege to the NATO Secretariat in Brussels. “There’s no way we’ll allow the Americans to leave us to the mercy of the Russian bear,” said Estonian President Jan Schutzstaffel.
Estonia is a key destination for renditions and interrogation of suspected terrorists apprehended by the US law enforcement agencies around the world. “We are very useful to America,” said Schutzstaffel, as he left to inaugurate the annual festivities marking the Nazi ‘liberation’ of his country in 1941.
Polish leaders were almost apoplectic with anger at the “American betrayal”. General Tadeuz Crackheadowsky said at a media briefing that Poland had been sacrificed at the altar of commerce. “Russia and German are now major trade partners and very soon you’ll see a reprise of WWII. They’ll be doing business in chunks of Polish land, mark my words.”
Across the American defence establishment, there was an inevitable sense of déjà vu. Many blamed President Barrack Obama’s policies for the state of drift. At a meeting of the US Central Command, when General Varkrimnelle said that after Obama’s presidency was over, Syria would be back on the table, his counterpart in the British Army became aggressive, saying, "What harm has Syria done to the UK? I don't want to jeapordise my retirement plans in the Bahamas over Assad.”
General Varkrimnelle remained unfazed and was extremely critical of Russia, saying that President Vladimir Putin had strayed from the script that had been followed for the past 20 years. "We were looking forward to landing our Ospreys in Crimea. But Putin just kicked us in the guts, I hate him," he said.
Meanwhile in Moscow, a Kremlin insider said President Putin was mulling retirement now that the premier threat to Russia was leaving the continent. “There are many tigers to tranquilise and migratory birds to help, but all this geopolitical work is getting in the President’s way,” he said.
In New Delhi, asked for his opinion about this strategic development, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party, said, “Actually, NATO’s exit will only have any meaning if there’s women’s empowerment.” And if you are still here and believe everything in this story, I have some prime real estate for sale in Antarctica.
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How Crimeans See Ukraine Crisis
Two years ago, the Maidan uprising ousted Ukraine’s elected president, prompting resistance in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, with Crimeans voting overwhelmingly to reunify with Russia, a move that then sparked a new cold war. As propaganda enveloped this issue, Natylie Baldwin went to see for herself last fall.
By Natylie Baldwin
We had boarded the bus that would transport us from the gates of Moscow’s Vnukovo airport to the plane waiting on the tarmac to fly us to Simferopol, Crimea, when a friendly blonde in her late 30’s asked us in accented English if we were from “The States”?
When we answered that we were, she told us she currently lived in Texas but was going to visit relatives in Crimea. As we chatted more and my travel mate and I explained our reason for going there – to see Crimea for ourselves and find out from the people living there what they thought about the Ukraine war and the peninsula’s reunification with Russia – it became apparent that this lady had a few things she wanted to get off her chest.
A map showing Crimea (in beige) and its proximity to both the Ukrainian mainland and Russia.
“You cannot separate Ukraine from Russia, there is too much culture and history together,” she said. Choking up on her words, she continued, “American people are good people I have many friends in the U.S. – but their government leaders are not because they interfere too much in other places. I worry about Hillary [Clinton], you know. When [Libyan leader Muammar] Gaddafi was killed, she said ‘We came, we saw, he died. Ha ha.’ What kind of leader is that? Is she going to be the next president?”
She felt that, due to the violence on the Maidan and Washington’s interference in the form of Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland’s manipulations, Putin’s intervention in Crimea was correct: “Putin did the right thing for Crimea, he is a good leader.”
When we landed in Simferopol, it was clear that the small airport had been recently renovated as everything was clean and freshly painted. After haggling down the price to something reasonable with the proprietor of a taxi service, we loaded ourselves into a cab in which stale cigarette smoke hung thick in the air.
My travel mate, who spoke functional Russian, asked the driver what he thought about Crimea’s reunification with Russia. He replied in broken English, “Historically and ethnically we are Russian, so it is better to be with Russia than Ukraine.” He acknowledged, however, that there were still many problems to be addressed and it would take time, but with Russia they now had hope.
His sentiments would be echoed throughout our stay in Crimea. Tatyana, a professional tour guide from Yalta, told us the next day that, in terms of road repair and airport renovation, there had been more infrastructure investment in one year under Russian governance than there had been in all the 23 years with post-Soviet Ukraine.
Looking around Simferopol, more such investment would obviously be needed. The roads and buildings had not been sufficiently maintained and it gave the place an air of being run down. Alongside that, however, were parks and trees, roads filled with people in cars and packed mini-buses during commute hours, and parents walking on sidewalks clutching the hands of their small children. Everyone was dressed in the typical Western attire one would see in the U.S. and most young people fingered smart phones.
On the bus ride from Simferopol to Yalta, there were many small houses in various stages of disrepair and frozen construction. My travel mate, who had been going in and out of Russia since the 1980s, remarked that it looked like the Soviet era.
As we approached the Yalta coastline, however, the lush trees and sparkling blue water that reflected a sunlit sky, emerged from the mountainous journey, dissipating the gloom. We toured Livadia Palace, the seasonal home of the czars from Alexander II to Nicholas II. It was also the location of the famous Yalta Conference of 1945 where Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin met as WWII was winding down.
Afterwards, we walked down a lane littered with lovely and well-cared for “stray” cats that now took up residence on the grounds of the palace. Then we came to a small two-story restaurant where we had lunch with Tatyana, who articulated the feelings of many Crimeans about the Maidan protests that rocked Kiev in early 2014:
“No one asked us if we wanted to go along with Maidan. There are Russians as well as people who are a mix of Russian and Ukrainian here. We are not against Ukraine as many of us have relatives there, but Maidan was not simply a spontaneous protest. We are aware of the phone call with Victoria Nuland and [U.S. Ambassador] Geoffrey Pyatt, we saw the photos of her with [opposition leaders] Yatsenyuk, Tiagnibok [leader of Svoboda, the neo-fascist group that was condemned by the EU in 2012], and Klitschko on television. We saw the images of her handing out cookies to the protesters.”
Russian naval base in Sevastopol in Crimea. (Photo by Natylie Baldwin)
We returned to Simferopol that evening and talked to a group of local small business entrepreneurs. They spoke of the many disruptions that the political upheaval with Ukraine and the subsequent reunification had caused. Kiev stopped paying salaries and pensions and even cut off electricity, which prompted Russia to provide generators to hospitals and other establishments where there were significant numbers of people in need.
In fact, Crimea had been dependent upon Ukraine for 70 percent of its power since reunification. Consequently, Russia is in the process of laying a power cable beneath the Kerch Strait from the Krasnodar region, which isnow partially operational and will be fully operational by summer of 2016.
In the meantime, Russia had been paying Ukraine $211 million to supply Crimea with energy through the end of 2015. In what is perceived by many to be retaliation for seceding, Ukraine had seriously cut energy supplies to Crimea without notice numerous times throughout 2014 and raised prices by 15 percent. Similar issues with water supply have also been reported.
“Kiev claims they want us back, but then they alienate us even more with these kinds of actions,” said one of the entrepreneurs, shaking his head.
Crimeans are also dealing with high inflation due to a combination of sanctions and transportation difficulties. Until the permanent land bridge to Russia is completed in December 2018, transportation between the mainland and the peninsula are limited to temporary bridges, ferry service and flights to and from Crimea’s one airport in Simferopol. (A second airport is due to be built in Sevastopol by spring 2016).
More and stricter business regulations under Russia’s governance have also proved to be a challenge. The entrepreneurs acknowledged that some people had lost businesses due to either the political transfer or the sanctions. But this did not change their conviction that the reunification with Russia was worth the short-term cost in order to save themselves from the extremist elements who had taken power in Kiev, immediately introduced legislation threatening the status of the Russian language, and fueled episodes of violence that ensued against ethnic Russians in Crimea.
The subsequent “anti-terrorist operation” employed by Kiev to deal with similar concerns of ethnic Russians in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, instead of negotiation, has only cemented this view.
“We are suffering under the sanctions, but the sanctions will not make us go back to where we don’t want to be,” said one entrepreneur. “There are still many Crimeans willing to fight if it were to become necessary.”
The next day we took another bus ride, this time to Sevastopol, where Russia has had its naval base since the reign of Catherine the Great in the Eighteenth Century. In fact, Crimea had been part of Russia from Catherine’s time until Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev decided to give it as a gift to Ukraine in 1954. Since both Russia and Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union at the time, the possible consequences of this decision were not considered.
Viktor Vasilievich Savitskiy, a retired Russian naval officer and resident of Crimea who served as an election monitor during the referendum, recalls being asked by British naval officers after the dissolution of the USSR, how having their naval base in a different country would work out. Savitskiy said, “I thought it was a strange question at the time. We had a long history and cultural ties with Ukraine. Now I realize those questions were not so strange.”
Not only is Sevastopol Russia’s only warm water port, it is the place where the Soviets stopped the German advance for eight months during WWII. By the time the siege had ended, around 90 percent of the city had been devastated.
One of the first places we visited in Sevastopol was a hostel run by Yuriy Mishin and his wife Manita. Born in Chita in the Lake Baikal area of Russia near the border of Siberia, Mishin was nostalgic for the days of the Soviet Union in which he’d grown up and said he would like to see a voluntary commonwealth consisting of the former republics of the USSR.
In February 2014, Mishin was a participant in Crimea’s resistance to the post-coup regime in Kiev, a resistance movement variously referred to as the “Crimean Spring” and the “Third Defense of Sevastopol.” He believes the events of the Maidan culminated in an illegal change of government in Kiev.
Although he says that under Viktor Yushchenko’s rule from 2005 to 2010, Ukrainian ultra-nationalism enjoyed a resurgence, there had been no substantive threat to Russian speakers in Crimea until the Maidan protests were hijacked by extremists who chanted threatening slogans [“Ukraine for Ukrainians”] and turned to violence. He said that after Maidan, “friends I’d had in Ukraine called and threatened to kill me because I was the director of a Russian historical club.”
Mishin said the people of Sevastopol began to have meetings to discuss ways to defend themselves from the growing upheaval that the events in Kiev had set in motion. He made a point that we would hear repeatedly from Crimeans we spoke to — that they did not expect Putin to intervene or to accept their requests for reunification due to the numerous times since the 1990s when Crimeans voted, either directly or through their parliament, for reunification, which Russia had always ignored. But they are very grateful that he did.
“Putin’s move was a pleasant surprise,” Mishin said. “He is a strong and brave politician.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin addresses a crowd on May 9, 2014, celebrating the 69th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Crimean port city of Sevastopol from the Nazis. (Russian government photo)
When asked what he thought should be the top priorities for Crimea going forward, he said “peace – no bombs or missiles – and develop infrastructure and tourism.”
As we hurried from one appointment to another in Sevastopol, we walked along a narrow cobbled road studded with ruts. Manita lamented how many times over the years there had been money allocated by the Ukrainian government to fix the roads but the repairs never happened because of the abiding corruption.
After about a five-minute walk in the morning chill, we arrived at a small office where a banner with the St. George colors draped one wall. A tall barrel-chested man with short dark hair and a full beard greeted us with a hardy handshake. His name was Anatoly Anatolievich Mareta and he was the leader (ataman) of the Black Sea Hundred Cossacks. He offered us hot tea as we sat down at a large table.
He then spoke at length about the events leading up to the Crimean resistance in early 2014. After the Feb. 21, 2014 agreement between embattled President Viktor Yanukovych and three European nations allowing for early elections, the armed ultra-nationalists who had hijacked the Maidan protests rejected the deal and led an uprising on Feb. 22 that forced Yanukovych to flee and his government to collapse. When the Europeans then abandoned their role as guarantors, a turning point was reached.
A one-day meeting of anti-Maidan supporters was held in Sevastopol as 30,000 Crimeans gathered in the center of the port city to declare that they didn’t recognize the coup government in Kiev and would not pay taxes to it. They then decided to defend Sevastopol and the Crimean isthmus with arms. They chose a people’s mayor, Aleksai Chaly, and checkpoints were set up. After extremist Tatars and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists showed up in Simferopol, throwing bottles, teargas, and beating busloads of ethnic Russians with flag poles, he said the group’s help was requested.
As the situation deteriorated further, with a standoff between local residents and local police officials who were beholden to and taking orders from Kiev underway, Mareta admitted that the Cossacks realized that theirs was a revolt that amounted to a suicide mission if Kiev gave the order to put it down with full force. “Their hearts were in it, but their minds knew they might lose,” Mareta said.
From Feb. 28 – 29, Cossacks from parts of continental Russia, including Kuban and Don, began to arrive to reinforce the isthmus. Ukrainian planes were blocked from landing at the local airport as Russian soldiers, stationed legally in Crimea under contract, manned the gates.
Crimeans told me that it was understood at the time that the “little green men” who quietly appeared on the streets in the coming days were Russian soldiers under lease at the naval base who had donned unmarked green uniforms. The people viewed them as protectors whose presence allowed them to peacefully conduct their referendum without interference from Kiev, not as invaders.
Savitskiy described the sense of joyful surprise among Crimeans in Sevastopol regarding the eventual Russian intervention: “The Russian military was very cautious and waited for the order to intervene. It was an unexpected gift.”
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Our driver in Sevastopol, who shall remain unnamed due to the fact that he has relatives in central Ukraine that he does not want to endanger, drove us to our next destination. We exchanged pleasantries and he asked us what part of the U.S. we were from. When I told him we were from San Francisco, he proceeded to serenade us with a few lines from Scott MacKenzie’s “If You’re Going to San Francisco, Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair.”
Born to a Russian mother and a Ukrainian father, he told us that he had served in the Ukrainian Navy until 2013, but he supported the reunification with Russia.
We parked in a lot near the dock at the naval base and were led a short distance over to a light beige van. A slight man with a rugged face, decked out in crisp khaki fatigues and a Putin t-shirt appeared. Nicolai Kachin gave us a tour of the interior of his taxi van which was adorned with images of places and people relevant to the “Third Defense of Sevastopol.” There were a number of photos of the Russian president.
Kachin was born in the Urals in continental Russia but had been attracted to Crimea since early childhood and considered it his “second home.” He had been working as a guide and driver when the Maidan protests were underway.
“I watched the news as the situation became more difficult in December (2013),” he said, recalling meetings among the Russian population of Crimea as things in Kiev degenerated into violence. After the events of Feb. 21, “the situation had changed. By February 23rd, the men and women of Sevastopol came out to defend the city. Chaly was elected mayor (after the Ukrainian appointed mayor was removed), seven checkpoints were set up and residents volunteered.”
He stressed his belief that, if Crimeans hadn’t taken the initiative to defend themselves against the coup in Kiev, and Putin hadn’t backed them up, their fate would have been far worse. He said, “Sevastopol was the first city to rise up in Crimea. If residents hadn’t stood up to defend themselves, war would be raging in Crimea worse than in the Donbass.”
Kachin was awarded medals by the Russian government for his role in guarding the checkpoint outside the Ukrainian naval site until the referendum was concluded. He displayed his medals with great pride, but emphasized that the people of Sevastopol did not have glory in mind when they defended their city:
“When originally we enrolled into the self-defense units, we had no idea about awards. We did not think about it. All the city – women, men, youth – stood up to defend Sevastopol and our dignity.”
He was very pleased to be able to relate his story to Americans as most of the people who’d sought him out were Russians, along with some Ukrainians and a few Europeans.
Expressions of gratitude toward President Putin could be seen throughout Crimea in the form of billboards with his picture alongside the words “Crimea. Russia. Forever.” I asked several residents if this reflected the general sentiment of the population. They confirmed enthusiastically that it did.
A Pew poll from April 2014 revealed that 91 percent of Crimean respondents believed the referendum was free and fair, 93 percent had confidence in Putin, and 85 percent believed Kiev should recognize the results.
Another poll in June 2014, this one from Gallup, showed 94 percent of ethnic Russians in Crimea thought the referendum reflected the views of the people and 68 percent of ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea agreed. The poll found that 74 percent believed that joining Russia would make life better.
A GfK poll from February 2015, sponsored by a pro-Ukrainian group in Canada, revealed 93 percent of Crimeans endorsed the referendum.
The Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority comprising approximately 12 percent of the population, is divided on reunification. Surveys reflecting the view of Crimean Tatars specifically, or which break down opinion by ethnicity to include the Tatars, are difficult to find. Russian media has reported that 30 percent of Crimean Tatars voted in favor of reunification but it is unclear where this figure originates from.
One survey conducted jointly by Open Democracy and the Levada Center, published in March of 2015, did include Tatar opinion. Their results revealed that 50 percent of Crimean Tatars supported the referendum (30 percent generally and 20 percent absolutely) while 30 percent opposed it and 20 percent did not express support or opposition.
There are reports from Western media and organizations that Crimea has been repressing Tatars since the reunification. The most recent report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights discusses claims of “people who were dismissed or threatened to be dismissed from their posts for refusing to take up Russian Federation passports”; concerns about due process in the trials of two high-profile defendants accused of extremism and/or terrorism; informal designation of the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Simferpol as an “extremist organization”; and, the apparent abduction, separately, of three Crimean Tatar men who have gone missing. A criminal murder investigation has been opened by Russian authorities in one of the cases.
No doubt there have been tensions since the coup in Kiev exacerbated pre-existing political and ethnic divisions across Ukraine; however, as journalist Roger Annis has pointed out, there were no repercussions when up to 20,000 Tatars took part in a rally on May 18, 2014, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of their expulsion by Stalin. This gathering was held in Simferopol in defiance of a temporary ban on mass rallies at the time by the Crimean authorities. Both The Guardian and AP reported on the rally.
However, Girey Bairov, a Tatar activist who works as a dentist in Crimea and refused to participate in the referendum, which he saw as illegitimate, explained the historical plight of the Crimean Tatars and the consequent distrust of living under Russian governance:
“Before Stalin repressions in 1944, Crimean Tatars lived in their own territory called Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Almost all names of Crimea villages and cities were of Crimean Tatar origin. We lived in our own houses. All land in collective farms belonged to us. We lost it all. While Crimean Tatar men were fighting with the Red Army against Fascists, Stalin made an order to deport all Crimea Tatar children, women and old people. All their belongings were taken away and they were thrown onto the hungry steppes of Central Asia where half of Tatar people died. From 1944 to 1989, we lived in exile, but were dreaming to return back to Crimea and everything we lost.”
In an attempt to facilitate reconciliation with Crimean Tatars, Putin issued a decree on April 21, 2014, reiterating previous public condemnations of the Stalin-era expulsion of the Tatars for allegedly collaborating with the Nazis, and calling for measures to rehabilitate the Tatars and “to restore historical justice and remove the consequences of the illegal deportation and the violations of their rights.”
Along with Russian and Ukrainian, the Tatar language is now an official language in Crimea – something the Tatars had never achieved while under Ukrainian governance.
Putin subsequently met with representatives of Crimean Tatars on May 16, 2014. Moreover, members of the leadership of Tatarstan, a republic of the Russian Federation with approximately 4 million citizens, have met with the Tatar population of Crimea.
But Bairov said Russia is only “trying to solve the Crimean Tatar question on paper.” He said the everyday reality for Tatars is very different, including a 90 percent reduction in the number of Tatars who hold positions in authority and Tatar activists being jailed and deported.
The most visible representative of the Tatar opposition to the Crimean referendum and reunification (and most cited by Western media) is Mustafa Dzhemilev, a Soviet-era dissident and current member of the Ukrainian parliament. Some of Dzhemilev’s public statements and actions, however, would seem to call his credibility into question.
For example, he has dismissed any concerns about the neo-fascist and ultra-nationalist elements in the post-coup government in Kiev and declared that all parties in the Ukrainian parliament are “ten times more democratic” than Putin’s government.
Dzhemilev’s latest activities include a blockade of Ukrainian goods into Crimea, which is being enforced at the border in partnership with neo-fascist members of Right Sector since September. The aforementioned UN human rights report expressed concern about these blockade enforcers who were described as “uniformed men sometimes wearing masks and balaclavas [who] reportedly have lists of people considered to be ‘traitors’ due to their alleged support to the de facto authorities in Crimea or to the armed groups in the east.”
Incidents of beatings and property damage are cited, adding that these events occurred in the presence of police and border guards on the Ukrainian side who declined to intervene.
During that same month, Dzhemilev’s close colleague, Refat Chubarov, promised to have electricity to Crimea cut off, foreshadowing the Nov. 21, 2015 sabotaging of power lines into Crimea which caused partial or full blackouts for almost 2 million Crimeans.
The convoluted logic behind these actions is reflected in the fact that the blockade has likely caused more damage to Ukrainian producers than Crimean consumers (who have been substituting Russian and Turkish imports) or the Russian government.
Dzhemilev has a history of allying with and expressing support for dubious parties in his years’ long role as the chairman of the Majlis, the unrecognized Crimean Tatar Assembly. In fact, Dzhemilev admitted in a 2012interview with the magazine, The Ukrainian Week, that the Majlis had largely been ineffective in resolving the main problems of naturalization, enfranchisement and legitimization of land acquisition for the thousands of Tatars who have returned to independent Ukraine since the 1990s.
Many Tatars have returned from Uzbekistan where they already had citizenship, creating obstacles to repatriation, such as requirements to return to Uzbekistan to pay a duty and renounce Uzbek citizenship.
The Majlis’ ineffectiveness contributed to a public row in 2011 with a segment of Crimean Tatars represented by a group called Sebat, which, according to the private Ukrainian television station Ukrayina, accused Dzhemilev and his deputy, Chubarov, of “betraying national interests, misappropriation [of] money and procrastinating the settlement of the land issue.”
Moreover, a network of Tatar social organizations formed in 2006, known as the Milli Firqua People’s Party of Crimea, denies the Majlis speaks for all or even most Crimean Tatars, citing 15-20 percent support for each of their respective organizations, with the majority of Crimean Tatars non-aligned.
The UN Refugee Agency’s timeline on Crimean Tatars in Ukraine chronicles the problems that Tatars faced throughout the 1990s in newly independent Ukraine, including high unemployment, lack of access to water and electricity in homes, and the absence of paved roads in their communities. The Majlis’ subsequent support for the “Orange Revolution” government of Viktor Yushchenko in 2005 yielded many promises but still no real action in the resolution of these issues.
Bairov acknowledges that the hopes of Crimean Tatars were not realized under Ukrainian governance: “While we lived in Ukraine from 1991 to 2014, we were waiting for 23 years that the Crimean Tatar question would be solved fairly. Our Ukrainian leaders convinced us that once Ukraine becomes a truly democratic state, we will have at least 36 percent of Crimean Tatars in power, as it was earlier [in 1944], the flag and coat of arms will be Crimean Tatar. But Ukraine failed to restore the rights of Crimean Tatars.”
President Barack Obama and President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine talk after statements to the press following their bilateral meeting at the Warsaw Marriott Hotel in Warsaw, Poland, June 4, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
Dzhemilev claimed in 2010 that most Tatars had supported Yulia Tymoshenko in that year’s elections, but also said that the Tatar community did not oppose the winner, Viktor Yanukovych, and would work with him. After supporting the coup in 2014, both Dzhemilev and Chubarov were granted appointments to the Ukrainian parliament as part of the Poroshenko Bloc, which is considered “the electoral machine of the [current] Ukrainian president,” Petro Poroshenko.
Following this admittedly ineffectual pattern, it is unclear how implementing a blockade or advocating for the cutting of electricity to Crimea will help fellow Tatars there or put them on the road to progress. Perhaps realizing this, some leaders of the Majlis consented to the resumption of power to Crimea and allowing repairs to the lines, a move Right Sector continued to block until the Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk announced on Dec. 16 that the blockade was now being officially endorsed by the Kiev government. Subsequently, President Poroshenko admitted to regularly meeting with Dzhemilev and Chubarov to “coordinate” the blockade.
It remains to be seen how the Crimean Tatars ultimately fare under Russian governance. Many hope that the initial gestures of reconciliation immediately after the reunification will be followed up on with substantive steps toward political and economic integration.
Natylie Baldwin is co-author of Ukraine: Zbig’s Grand Chessboard & How the West Was Checkmated, available from Tayen Lane Publishing. In October of 2015, she traveled to six cities in the Russian Federation and has written several articles based on her conversations and interviews with a cross-section of Russians. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in various publications including Consortiumnews, OpEd News, The New York Journal of Books, The Common Line, Santa Fe Sun Monthly, Dissident Voice, Energy Bulletin, Newtopia Magazine, and the Lakeshore. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and blogs at natyliesbaldwin.com
95.7% of Crimeans in referendum voted to join Russia - preliminary results
Over 95 percent of voters in the Crimean referendum have answered ‘yes’ to the autonomous republic joining Russia and less than 4 percent of the vote participants want the region to remain part of Ukraine, according to preliminary results.
With over 75 percent of the votes already counted, preliminary result show that 95.7 percent of voters said 'yes' to the reunion of the republic with Russia as a constituent unit of the Russian Federation. Only 3.2 percent of the ballots were cast for staying with Ukraine as an Autonomous Republic with broader rights. The remaining 1.1 percent of the ballots were declared invalid.
The overall voter turnout in the referendum on the status of Crimea is 81,37%, according to the head of the Crimean parliament’s commission on the referendum, Mikhail Malyshev.
The preliminary results of the popular vote were announced during a meeting in the center of Sevastopol, the city that hosts Russia's Black Sea fleet. The final results will be announced at a press conference at 7:00 GMT on Monday.
Over a half of the Tatars living in the port city took part in the referendum, with the majority of them voting in favor of joining Russia, reports Itar-Tass citing a representative of the Tatar community Lenur Usmanov. About 40% of Crimean Tatars went to polling stations on Sunday, the republic’s prime minister Sergey Aksyonov said.
In Simferopol, the capital of the republic, at least 15,000 have gathered to celebrate the referendum in central Lenin square and people reportedly keep arriving. Demonstrators, waving Russian and Crimean flags, were watching a live concert while waiting for the announcement of preliminary results of the voting.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the citizens of the peninsula have been given an opportunity to freely express their will and exercise their right to self-determination.
International observers are planning to present their final declaration on the Crimean referendum on March 17, the head of the monitors’ commission, Polish MP Mateusz Piskorski told journalists. He added that the voting was held in line with international norms and standards. People in Crimea are gripped by the feeling that their dreams have come true – a desire to join Russia, which they believe can guarantee the stabilization in their social and political life, Piskorski told RT.
Next week, Crimea will officially introduce the ruble as a second official currency along with Ukrainian hryvna, Aksyonov told Interfax. In his words, the dual currency will be in place for about six months.
Overall, the republic’s integration into Russia will take up to a year, the Prime Minister said, adding that it could be done faster. However, they want to maintain relations with “economic entities, including Ukraine,” rather than burn bridges.
Moscow is closely monitoring the vote count in Crimea, said Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Karasin.
“The results of the referendum will be considered once they are drawn up,” he told Itar-Tass.
The decision to hold a referendum was made after the bloody uprising in Kiev which oustedPresident Vladimir Yanukovich from power. Crimea - which is home to an ethnic Russian majority population - refused to recognize the coup-appointed government as legitimate. Crimeans feared that the new leadership would not represent their interests and respect rights. Crimeans were particularly unhappy over parliament's decision to revoke the law allowing using minority languages – including Russian – as official along with the Ukrainian tongue. Crimeans staged mass anti-Maidan protests and asked Russia to protect them.
When the Cold War ended, many believed there would be a peace dividend, nuclear disarmament, and dismantling of the war machine with industrial conversion to peaceful technology. Instead, we’ve witnessed the aggressive expansion of NATO, to include the former Soviet Republics, right up to the Russian border, which should be a wake-up call to many living in the American Empire. Many people still labor under the apparently false impression that the US is exemplary in holding up the rule of law, the sanctity of the United Nations, and human rights. After all, Americans were the good guys who defeated Hitler and made the world safe for democracy. The NATO expansion took place despite promises made to Gorbachev after the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union with the fall of the Berlin Wall that if he dropped his objections to the admission of a unified Germany as a full-fledged, fully armed member of NATO, the western states would freeze NATO membership and not expand any further east. Russia lost 20 million people in World War II to the Nazi onslaught, and Russian wariness of a strengthened reunited Germany participating with their former NATO foe was certainly understandable.
I visited the Soviet Union in 1989 on a delegation of the NY Professional Roundtable during the heady days of Gorbachev’s newly announced doctrine of glasnost and perstroika—openness and reconstruction. It seemed as though every man over sixty was sporting a chest covered with medals, commemorating their service in the Great War. On every other street corner in Moscow and Leningrad, there were memorials to the war dead. The Piskaryovskoye Cemetery at Leningrad, with acres of mass graves, anonymous mounds of over 500,000 buried there who perished in the 872 day siege of Leningrad, was a painful, searing vision which haunts me still. The siege resulted in the tragic deaths of up to 1,500,000 soldiers and civilians and the evacuation of 1,400,000 more, many of whom died due to starvation and bombardment. The guide for our delegation at one point asked me, “Why don’t you Americans trust us?” “Why don’t we trust you?” I exclaimed indignantly. “What about Hungary? What about Czechoslovakia? Why should we trust you?” He looked at me with a pained expression, “But we had to protect our borders from Germany!” I looked into his watery blue eyes and heard the fervent sincerity in his voice. At that moment, I felt betrayed by my government and the years of constant reminders about the communist threat. The land was flat as a table between Russia and Germany. There was no buffer against the German onslaught, except the mountains of Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The Russians were in a defensive posture as they built their military might. They were using Eastern Europe as a buffer against any repetition of the ravages of war they had experienced at the hands of Germany.
And the huge multi-trillion dollar buildup of nuclear armaments and NATO forces—what were we defending? We had our forces amassed, including nuclear weapons parked in eight NATO countries on their continent. And when we were the only country on the planet in possession of the bomb—after Hiroshima and Nagasaki-- we refused to turn it over to international control under UN auspices, which had been urged by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the bomb. Instead President Truman insisted on an unfair advantage for the US in his Baruch plan—letting the American people think he was being reasonable, pretending to present fair terms for controlling the bomb which in reality impelled Stalin to get his own bomb—putting us into a tragic and costly arms race—imperiling our own national security and the entire fate of the earth.
Nothing has changed. The Empire has no clothes. It has been revealed. Having unilaterally withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, the US is leading NATO to build a ring of missiles round Russia in Europe. It is globalizing its military forces and operations. An armada of missile-laden NATO war ships is deployed in oceans around the world with nearly 1,000 US military bases on every continent on the planet. Working in this expanded military capacity, NATO members and their allies are encircling China in the Pacific, just as we are surrounding Russia, while rejecting Russia and China’s repeated proposals to negotiate a ban on weapons in space. NATO is a lawless rogue alliance, determined to control the world’s oil and other scarce resources, by brute force.
The US first led NATO into illegal action when it bombed Kosovo in the interests of “protecting” people, without the UN’s legally required authorization for any acts of warfare that are not taken in self-defense against an armed attack as required by the UN Charter. The US and its NATO allies refused to go to the UN for permission to enter into hostilities, as required under the UN Charter, because Russia was threatening to veto any such action in the Security Council to protect its ally, Serbia. Despite the lip service NATO gave to some sort of trumped up “responsibility to protect” Kosovo’s Albanians, (by bombing the Serbians to smithereens) Clinton was on the record saying: "If we're going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be a key .... That's what this Kosovo thing is all about."1
It’s beyond belief that NATO’s assault on Libya is only about “protecting civilians” while at the same time hundreds of civilians are being killed by NATO bombs and drones. Here too NATO’s old boy colonial network is seeking to secure Libya’s oil. NATO is now engaged in three wars in Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The US is also bombing blindly away in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia as well, with “pilots” sitting at their computers and playing with their joysticks, lawlessly targeting “terrorists” with their unmanned drones, raining death and destruction down on the unseen people below, assassinating those whom they suspect may be wishing to do harm, without evidence, trial, finding of guilt, along with a host of innocent men, women and children.
It’s time to disband NATO. There will be a NATO summit meeting in Chicago, in May 2012. Grassroots activists are organizing around the world to gather at a counter summit in Chicago to restore the rule of law as a means of resolving international disputes and to voice a new vision of global security and peace. To sign on to this new Call for Action and make common cause with the movement to disband NATO, contact: Judith LeBlanc jleblanc@peaceaction.org or Joseph Gerson jgerson@afsc.org
(Reprinted from Space Alert, Fall 2011 Newsletter of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space)
Since Russia began its illegal military intervention in Ukraine, Russian officials have accused NATO of a series of mythical provocations, threats and hostile actions stretching back over 25 years. This webpage sets out the facts.
Claim: NATO's Open Door policy creates new dividing lines in Europe and deepens existing ones
Fact: NATO's Open Door policy has helped close Cold War-era divisions in Europe. NATO enlargement has contributed to spreading democracy, security and stability further across Europe.
By choosing to adopt the standards and principles of NATO, aspirant countries gave their democracies the strongest possible anchor. And by taking the pledge to defend NATO, they received the pledge that NATO would protect them.
NATO membership is not imposed on countries. Each sovereign country has the right to choose for itself whether it joins any treaty or alliance.
This fundamental principle is enshrined in international agreements including the Helsinki Final Act which says that every state has the right "to belong or not to belong to international organizations, to be or not to be a party to bilateral or multilateral treaties including the right to be or not to be a party to treaties of alliance." And by signing the NATO-Russia Founding Act, Russia agreed to respect states' "inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security."
Over the past 65 years, 28 countries have chosen freely, and in accordance with their domestic democratic processes, to join NATO. Not one has asked to leave. This is their sovereign choice. Article 13 of the Washington Treaty specifically gives Allies the right to leave should they wish to. Back to top
Claim: NATO invitation to Montenegro to start accession talks meets opposition in the country and is destabilizing
Fact: In December 2015 NATO Foreign Ministers invited Montenegro to begin accession talks to join the Alliance. This was a historic achievement, which will strengthen the security of Montenegro, the Western Balkans, and NATO.
Nobody forces a nation to join NATO. Membership is a national decision and free choice for sovereign countries. Candidate countries need to apply. And as always, all NATO members need to agree to it.
The question of NATO membership is an issue for Montenegro and for Montenegrins themselves. This principle also applies to national (country-specific) procedures for approving accession decisions. It is not a party political issue. It is a question of national interest.
Each country has a sovereign right to choose its own security arrangements. No third country has a right to interfere on the issue of NATO membership.
To join the Alliance nations are expected to respect the values of NATO and to meet demanding political, economic and military criteria.
Countries which joined the Alliance have been able to strengthen their democracy, boost their security and make their citizens safer. Enlargement has fostered stability and security in Europe and it has brought closer a Europe that is whole, free and at peace. Back to top
Claim: NATO enlargement in the Balkans is destabilizing
Fact: All the countries of Central and Eastern Europe which have joined NATO over the past decade have enjoyed peace, security and cooperation with their neighbours since then.
The countries in the region which aspire to membership are conducting reforms to bring themselves closer to NATO standards. These reforms enhance democracy and security in each country.
The countries in the region have played a significant role in NATO's operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo, providing training to the Afghan forces and helping to provide a safe and secure environment for all people in Kosovo. This is a direct contribution to stability in the broader Euro-Atlantic area. Back to top
Claim: NATO tried to "drag" Ukraine into the Alliance
Fact: When the administrations of President Kuchma and President Yushchenko made clear their aspiration to NATO membership, the Alliance worked with them to encourage the reforms which would be needed to make that aspiration a reality.
When the administration of President Yanukovych opted for a non-bloc status, NATO respected that decision and continued to work with Ukraine on reforms, at the government's request.
NATO respects the right of every country to choose its own security arrangements. In fact, Article 13 of the Washington Treaty specifically gives Allies the right to leave.
Over the past 65 years, 28 countries have chosen freely, and in accordance with their domestic democratic processes, to join NATO. Not one has asked to leave. This is their sovereign choice. Back to top
Claim: Russia has the right to demand a "100% guarantee" that Ukraine will not join NATO
Fact: According to Article I of the Helsinki Final Act (here) which established the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in 1975, every country has the right "to belong or not to belong to international organizations, to be or not to be a party to bilateral or multilateral treaties including the right to be or not to be a party to treaties of alliance." All the OSCE member states, including Russia, have sworn to uphold those principles.
In line with those principles, Ukraine has the right to choose for itself whether it joins any treaty of alliance, including NATO's founding treaty.
Moreover, when Russia signed the Founding Act, it pledged to uphold "respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security".
Thus Ukraine has the right to choose its own alliances, and Russia has, by its own repeated agreement, no right to dictate that choice. Back to top
Claim: NATO provoked the "Maidan" protests in Ukraine
Fact: The demonstrations which began in Kiev in November 2013 were born out of Ukrainians' desire for a closer relationship with the European Union, and their frustration when former President Yanukovych halted progress toward that goal as a result of Russian pressure.
The protesters' demands included constitutional reform, a stronger role for the parliament, the formation of a government of national unity, an end to the pervasive and endemic corruption, early presidential elections and an end to violence. There was no mention of NATO.
Ukraine began discussing the idea of abandoning its non-bloc status in September 2014, six months after the illegal and illegitimate Russian "annexation" of Crimea and the start of Russia's aggressive actions in Eastern Ukraine. The final decision by Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada to abandon the non bloc status was taken in December 2014, over a year after the pro-EU demonstrations began. Back to top
Claim: NATO was planning to base ships and missiles in Crimea
Fact: This is fiction. The idea has never been proposed, suggested or discussed within NATO. Back to top
Claim: NATO intends to set up a military base in Georgia
Fact: NATO agreed at the Wales Summit to offer Georgia a substantial package of assistance to strengthen Georgia's defence and interoperability capabilities with the Alliance. As agreed with Georgia, a training facility will be set up in Georgia to contribute to the training and interoperability of Georgian and Alliance personnel.
This is a training centre, not a military base.
This initiative will result in closer cooperation with Georgia's sovereign and internationally-recognised government, and improved training and democratic control for its armed forces. As such, it will contribute to stability by making Georgia's armed forces more professional, and by reinforcing the democratic controls over them. Back to top
Claim: NATO has bases all around the world
Fact: NATO's military infrastructure outside the territory of Allies is limited to those areas in which the Alliance is conducting operations.
Thus the Alliance has military facilities in Afghanistan for the support of the Resolute Support mission, and in Kosovo for the KFOR mission.
NATO has civilian liaison offices in partner countries such as Georgia, Ukraine and Russia. These cannot be considered as "military bases".
Individual Allies have overseas bases on the basis of bilateral agreements and the principle of host-nation consent, in contrast with Russian bases on the territory of Moldova (Transnistria), Ukraine (the Autonomous Republic of Crimea) and Georgia (the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia). Back to top
NATO and its attitude to Russia
Claim: NATO is trying to encircle Russia
Fact: This claim ignores the facts of geography. Russia's land border is just over 20,000 kilometres long. Of that, 1,215 kilometres, or less than one-sixteenth, face current NATO members.
Russia shares land borders with 14 countries (Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China, North Korea). Only five of them are NATO members.
Claims that NATO is building bases around Russia are similarly groundless. Outside the territory of NATO nations, NATO only maintains a significant military presence in three places: Kosovo, Afghanistan, and at sea off the Horn of Africa. All three operations are carried out under United Nations mandate, and thus carry the approval of Russia, along with all other Security Council members. Before Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine began, Russia provided logistical support to the Afghan mission, and cooperated directly with the counter-piracy operation, showing clearly that Russia viewed them as a benefit, not a threat.
With respect to the permanent stationing of U.S. and other Allied forces on the territory of other Allies in Europe, NATO has full abided by the commitments made in the NATO-Russia Founding Act. There has been no permanent stationing of additional combat forces on the territory of other allies; and total force levels have, in fact, been substantially reduced since the end of the Cold War
NATO has partnership relationships with many countries in Europe and Asia, as can be seen from this interactive map. Such partnerships, which are requested by the partners in question, focus exclusively on issues agreed with them, such as disaster preparedness and relief, transparency, armed forces reform, and counter-terrorism. These partnerships cannot legitimately be considered a threat to Russia, or to any other country in the region, let alone an attempt at encirclement. Back to top
Claim: NATO has a Cold War mentality
Fact: The Cold War ended over 20 years ago. It was characterized by the opposition of two ideological blocs, the presence of massive standing armies in Europe, and the military, political and economic domination by the Soviet Union of almost all its European neighbours.
The end of the Cold War was a victory for the people of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and opened the way to overcoming the division of Europe. At pathbreaking Summit meetings in the years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia played its part in building a new, inclusive European security architecture, including the Charter of Paris, the establishment of the OSCE, the creation of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, and the NATO-Russia Founding Act.
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has introduced sweeping changes to its membership and working practices – changes made clear by its adoption of new Strategic Concepts in 1999 and 2010. Accusations that NATO has retained its Cold War purpose ignore the reality of those changes.
Over the same period, NATO reached out to Russia with a series of partnership initiatives, culminating in the foundation of the NATO-Russia Council in 2002. No other country has such a privileged relationship with NATO.
As stated by NATO heads of state and government at the Wales Summit in September 2014, "the Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia. But we cannot and will not compromise on the principles on which our Alliance and security in Europe and North America rest." (The Wales Summit Declaration can be read here).
This is NATO's official policy, defined and expressed transparently by its highest level of leadership. As an organisation which is accountable to its member nations, NATO is bound to implement this policy. Back to top
Claim: NATO is a U.S. geopolitical project
Fact: NATO was founded in 1949 by twelve sovereign nations: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. It has since grown to 28 Allies who each took an individual and sovereign decision to join this Alliance.
All decisions in NATO are taken by consensus, which means that a decision can only be taken if every single Ally accepts it.
Equally, the decision for any country to take part in NATO-led operations falls to that country alone, according to its own legal procedures. No member of the Alliance can decide on the deployment of any other Ally's forces. Back to top
Claim: NATO's purpose is to contain or weaken Russia
Fact: NATO's purpose is set out in the preamble to the Washington Treaty, the Alliance's Founding document (online here ).
This states that Allies are determined "to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area. They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security."
In line with those goals, in the past two decades NATO has led missions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, over Libya and off the Horn of Africa. The Alliance has conducted exercises from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic and across Europe, and on issues ranging from counter-terrorism to submarine rescue - including with Russia itself.
None of these activities can credibly be presented as directed against Russia. Back to top
Claim: NATO has tried to isolate or marginalise Russia
Fact: Since the early 1990s, the Alliance has consistently worked to build a cooperative relationship with Russia on areas of mutual interest.
NATO began reaching out, offering dialogue in place of confrontation, at the London NATO Summit of July 1990 (declaration here). In the following years, the Alliance promoted dialogue and cooperation by creating new fora, the Partnership for Peace (PfP) and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), open to the whole of Europe, including Russia (PfP founding documents here and here).
After the conclusion of the Dayton Accords in 1995, Russian forces participated in the NATO-led operations to implement the peace agreement (IFOR and SFOR) and in the NATO-led operation to implement the peace in Kosovo (KFOR), under UN Security Council mandates.
In 1997 NATO and Russia signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, creating the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council. In 2002 they upgraded that relationship, creating the NATO-Russia Council (NRC). They reaffirmed their commitment to the Founding Act at NATO-Russia summits in Rome in 2002 and in Lisbon in 2010 (The Founding Act can be read here, the Rome Declaration which established the NRC here, the Lisbon NRC Summit Declarationhere.)
Since the foundation of the NRC, NATO and Russia have worked together on issues ranging from counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism to submarine rescue and civil emergency planning. We set out to build a unique relationship with Russia, one built not just on mutual interests but also on cooperation and the shared objective for a Europe whole free and at peace. No other partner has been offered a comparable relationship, nor a similar comprehensive institutional framework. Back to top
Claim: NATO should have been disbanded at the end of the Cold War
Fact: At the London Summit in 1990, Allied heads of state and government agreed that ""We need to keep standing together, to extend the long peace we have enjoyed these past four decades". This was their sovereign choice and was fully in line with their right to collective defence under the United Nations Charter.
Since then, twelve more countries have chosen to join NATO. The Alliance has taken on new missions and adapted to new challenges, all the while sticking to its fundamental principles of security, collective defence, and decision-making by consensus.
Twice since the end of the Cold War, NATO has adopted new Strategic Concepts (in 1999 and 2010), adapting to new realities. Thus, rather than being disbanded, NATO adapted, and continues to change, to live up to the needs and expectations of Allies, and to promote their shared vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace. Back to top
Claim: NATO enlargement followed the same process as the expansion of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact
Fact: Any comparison between NATO enlargement after the end of the Cold War and the creation of the Warsaw Pact or the Soviet bloc at the end of World War II is an utter distortion of history.
The incorporation of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe into the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact after the Second World War was carried out under conditions of military occupation, one-party dictatorship and the violent suppression of dissent.
When the countries of Central and Eastern Europe applied for NATO membership after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, it was of their own free choice, through their own national democratic processes, and after conducting the required reforms.
This was done through debate, in peacetime conditions, and in a transparent way. Back to top
NATO as a "threat"
Claim: NATO is a threat to Russia
Fact: NATO has reached out to Russia consistently, transparently and publicly over the past 25 years.
The Alliance has created unique cooperation bodies – the Permanent Joint Council and the NATO-Russia Council – to embody its relationship with Russia. It has invited Russia to cooperate on missile defence, an invitation extended to no other partner.
In the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, agreed with Russia in 1997 and reaffirmed at NATO-Russia summits in Rome in 2002 and in Lisbon in 2010, NATO stated that "in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defence and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces". The Alliance has fulfilled all such commitments.
NATO's official policy towards Russia was most recently articulated by the heads of state and government of the Alliance at the Wales Summit in September 2014.
They stated that "the Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia. But we cannot and will not compromise on the principles on which our Alliance and security in Europe and North America rest." (The Wales Summit Declaration can be read here).
Thus, neither the Alliance's policies nor its actions are a threat to Russia. Back to top
Claim: NATO missile defence targets Russia and the Iran agreement proves it
Fact: NATO's missile defence system is not designed or directed against Russia. It does not pose a threat to Russia's strategic deterrent.
As already explained by NATO Deputy Secretary General Alexander Vershbow, geography and physics make it impossible for the NATO system to shoot down Russian intercontinental missiles from NATO sites in Romania or Poland. Their capabilities are too limited, their planned numbers too few, and their locations too far south or too close to Russia to do so.
Russian officials have confirmed that the planned NATO shield will not, in fact, undermine Russia's deterrent. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's missile defence envoy, said on January 26, 2015, that "neither the current, nor even the projected" missile defence system "could stop or cast doubt on Russia's strategic missile potential."
Finally, the Russian claim that the framework agreement on Iran's nuclear programme obviates the need for NATO missile defence is wrong on two counts.
The Iranian agreement does not cover the proliferation of ballistic-missile technology which is an issue completely different from nuclear questions.
Furthermore, NATO has repeatedly made clear that missile defence is not about any one country, but about the threat posed by proliferation more generally. In fact, over 30 countries have obtained, or are trying to obtain, ballistic missile technology. The Iran framework agreement does not change those facts. Back to top
Claim: The accession of new Allies to NATO threatens Russia
Fact: Every country which joins NATO undertakes to uphold the principles and policies of the Alliance, and the commitments which NATO has already made.
This includes the commitment that NATO poses no threat to Russia, as most recently stated at the Wales Summit.
Therefore, as the number of countries which join NATO grows, so does the number of countries which agree that "the Alliance does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to Russia." Back to top
Claim: NATO exercises are a provocation which threatens Russia
Fact: Every nation has the right to conduct exercises, as long as they do so within their international obligations, including notifying the actual numbers and providing observation opportunities when required.
In order to promote mutual trust and transparency, OSCE members are bound by the Vienna Document to inform one another in advance of exercises which include more than 9,000 troops, unless the exercises are snap tests of readiness.
NATO and Allies have consistently stood by the terms and the spirit of the Vienna Document. Those exercises which crossed the notification threshold were announced well in advance. This is why Russia could send observers to the UK-led Exercise Joint Warrior in April 2015.
Russia, on the other hand, has repeatedly called snap exercises including tens of thousands of troops, with some of them taking place close to NATO territory. This practice of calling massive exercises without warning is a breach of the spirit of the Vienna Document, raising tension and undermining trust. This is especially the case because Russia's military takeover of Crimea was masked by exactly such a snap exercise.
It is therefore Russia's exercises, not NATO's, which are a threat to stability. Back to top
Promises and pledges
Claim: Russia has the right to oppose NATO-supported infrastructure on the territory of member states in Central and Eastern Europe
Fact: The relationship between NATO and Russia is governed by the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, agreed by NATO Allies and Russia in 1997 and reaffirmed at NATO-Russia summits in Rome in 2002, and in Lisbon in 2010. (The Founding Act can be read here.)
In the Founding Act, the two sides agreed that: "in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defence and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces. Accordingly, it will have to rely on adequate infrastructure commensurate with the above tasks. In this context, reinforcement may take place, when necessary, in the event of defence against a threat of aggression and missions in support of peace consistent with the United Nations Charter and the OSCE governing principles, as well as for exercises consistent with the adapted CFE Treaty, the provisions of the Vienna Document 1994 and mutually agreed transparency measures. Russia will exercise similar restraint in its conventional force deployments in Europe."
Therefore, both infrastructure and reinforcements are explicitly permitted by the Founding Act and therefore by Russia. Back to top
Claim: NATO's response to Russia's illegal actions in Ukraine violates the Founding Act
Fact: NATO has responded to the new strategic reality caused by Russia's illegitimate and illegal actions in Ukraine by reinforcing the defence of Allies in Central and Eastern Europe, and by ensuring the ability to increase those reinforcements if necessary, including by upgrading infrastructure.
All this is consistent with the Founding Act, quoted above.
In the Founding Act, all signatories, including Russia, agreed on principles which include "refraining from the threat or use of force against each other as well as against any other state, its sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence in any manner inconsistent with the United Nations Charter and with the Declaration of Principles Guiding Relations Between Participating States contained in the Helsinki Final Act" and the "respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security, the inviolability of borders and peoples' right of self-determination as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE documents."
NATO has respected those commitments faithfully. Russia, on the other hand, has declared the annexation of Crimea, supported violent separatists in the east of the country, and insisted that Ukraine be barred from joining NATO. Back to top
Claim: NATO nuclear arrangements violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty
Fact: The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is the foundation for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament. At the Wales Summit in September 2014, all Allies reaffirmed their full support for the treaty.
The deployment of American nuclear weapons on the territories of NATO allies is fully consistent with the NPT. These weapons remain under the custody and control of the United States at all times.
Furthermore, NATO's nuclear arrangements are older than the NPT, and this issue was fully addressed when the treaty was negotiated. The arrangements were made clear to delegations and were made public. Back to top
Claim: NATO nuclear exercises violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty
Fact: At the Wales Summit in September 2014, Allies reaffirmed their full support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). NATO's nuclear posture is fully consistent with the treaty.
At no point has NATO moved nuclear weapons to Eastern Europe. There have been no NATO nuclear exercises in the eastern part of the Alliance since the end of the Cold War.
It is Russia that has started to use its nuclear weapons as a tool in its strategy of intimidation. Russia has increased nuclear rhetoric and stepped up its nuclear exercises. Russian nuclear-capable bombers are flying close to Alliance borders. Russia has also threatened to base nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad and Crimea.
This activity and this rhetoric do not contribute to transparency and predictability, particularly in the context of a changed security environment due to Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine. Back to top
Claim: NATO leaders promised at the time of German reunification that the Alliance would not expand to the East
Fact: No such promise was ever made, and Russia has never produced any evidence to back up its claim.
Every formal decision which NATO takes is adopted by consensus and recorded in writing. There is no written record of any such decision having been taken by the Alliance: therefore, no such promise can have been made.
Moreover, at the time of the alleged promise, the Warsaw Pact still existed. Its members did not agree on its dissolution until 1991. Therefore, it is not plausible to suggest that the idea of their accession to NATO was on the agenda in 1989.
This was confirmed by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev himself. This is what Mr Gorbachev said on 15 October 2014 in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta and Russia Beyond The Headlines: "The topic of 'NATO expansion' was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn't bring it up, either." Back to top
NATO's operations
Claim: NATO's operation in Afghanistan was a failure
Fact: NATO took over the command of the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in 2003.
Under NATO's command, the mission progressively extended throughout Afghanistan, was joined by 22 non-NATO countries and built up from scratch an Afghan National Security Force of more than 350,000 soldiers and police.
Threats to Afghanistan's security continue. However, the Afghan forces are now ready to take full responsibility for security across the country, as agreed with the Afghan authorities.
NATO is providing training, advice and assistance to the Afghan forces through the "Resolute Support" mission. Back to top
Claim: The NATO-led mission in Afghanistan failed to stop the Afghan drugs trade
Fact: As with any sovereign country, the primary responsibility for upholding law and order in Afghanistan, including as regards the trade in narcotics, rests with the Afghan government.
The international community is supporting the Afghan government to live up to this responsibility in many ways, including both through the United Nations and through the European Union.
NATO is not a main actor in this area. This role has been agreed with the international community. Back to top
Claim: NATO's operation over Libya was illegitimate
The NATO-led operation was launched under the authority of two UN Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR), 1970 and 1973, both quoting Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and neither of which was opposed by Russia.
UNSCR 1973 authorized the international community "to take all necessary measures" to "protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack". This is what NATO did, with the political and military support of regional states and members of the Arab League.
After the conflict, NATO cooperated with the UN International Commission of Inquiry on Libya, which found no breach of UNSCR 1973 or international law, concluding instead that "NATO conducted a highly precise campaign with a demonstrable determination to avoid civilian casualties." Back to top
Claim: NATO's operation over Kosovo was illegitimate
Fact: The NATO operation for Kosovo followed over a year of intense efforts by the UN and the Contact Group, of which Russia was a member, to bring about a peaceful solution. The UN Security Council on several occasions branded the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and the mounting number of refugees driven from their homes as a threat to international peace and security. NATO's Operation Allied Force was launched to prevent the large-scale and sustained violations of human rights and the killing of civilians.
Following the air campaign, the subsequent NATO-led peacekeeping operation, KFOR, which initially included Russia, has been under UN mandate (UNSCR 1244), with the aim of providing a safe and secure environment in Kosovo. Back to top
Claim: The cases of Kosovo and Crimea are identical
Fact: The Kosovo operation was conducted following exhaustive discussion involving the whole international community dealing with a long-running crisis that was recognized by the UN Security Council as a threat to international peace and security.
Following the operation, the international community engaged in nearly ten years of diplomacy, under UN authority, to find a political solution and to settle Kosovo's final status, as prescribed by UNSCR 1244.
In Crimea, there was no pre-existing crisis, no attempt to discuss the situation with the Ukrainian government, no involvement of the United Nations, and no attempt at a negotiated solution.
In Kosovo, international attempts to find a solution took over 3,000 days. In Crimea, Russia annexed part of Ukraine's territory in less than 30 days. It has sought to justify its illegal and illegitimate annexation, in part, by pointing to a "referendum" that was inconsistent with Ukrainian law, held under conditions of illegal armed occupation with no freedom of expression or media access for the opposition, and without any credible international monitoring. Back to top
Claim: Russia's annexation of Crimea was justified by the opinion of the International Court of Justice on the independence of Kosovo (online here).
Fact: The court stated that their opinion was not a precedent. The court said they had been given a "narrow and specific" question about Kosovo's independence which would not cover the broader legal consequences of that decision. Back to top
Claim: The Ukrainian authorities are illegitimate
Fact: Ukraine's President Poroshenko was elected on 25 May with a clear majority in a vote which the OSCE characterized (report here) as showing the "clear resolve of the authorities to hold what was a genuine election largely in line with international commitments and with a respect for fundamental freedoms." The only areas where serious restrictions were reported were those controlled by separatists, who undertook "increasing attempts to derail the process."
The current parliament was elected on 26 October in a vote which the OSCE characterized (report here) as "an amply contested election that offered voters real choice, and a general respect for fundamental freedoms". It again pointed out that "Electoral authorities made resolute efforts to organize elections throughout the country, but they could not be held in parts of the regions (oblasts) of Donetsk and Luhansk or on the Crimean peninsula".
Finally, Russian officials continue to allege that the Ukrainian parliament and government are dominated by "Nazis" and "fascists." However, in the parliamentary elections, the parties whom Russia labelled as "fascists" fell far short of the threshold of 5% needed to enter parliament. Ukraine's electorate clearly voted for unity and moderation, not separatism or extremism, and the composition of the parliament reflects that.
In short, the President and parliament are legitimate, the actions of the separatists were not. Back to top
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![Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko gave NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen the Order of Liberty, Ukraine's highest award for foreign nationals [AP]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/images/2014/9/2//201492155251809734_20.jpg "NATO: The alliance that should have been dissolved")
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