The US Department of Defense appears to be determined to sacrifice Ukrainian independence.
No country can veto Ukraine’s wish to join NATO, America’s top security official has said. Lloyd Austin’s statement comes after Moscow warned Kiev that joining the bloc would go beyond “red lines” and may prompt “active measures.” Ukraine is free to decide its future and foreign policy, with no foreign entity having a say in its aspiration to join the NATO alliance, the US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday.
“Ukraine… has a right to decide its own future foreign policy and we expect that they will be able to do that without any outside interference,” Austin said at a joint press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Andrey Taran in Kiev.
No third country has a veto over NATO’s membership decisions.
The statement apparently came in response to a harsh warning against Ukraine ever joining NATO, voiced by Moscow a day earlier. Speaking to French journalists for a program called ‘Vladimir Putin: Master of the Game,’ the Kremlin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Kiev’s accession to NATO would be “the worst-case scenario.”
Russia has made it very, very clear that any Ukrainian attempt to join NATO will be met by an immediate invasion and occupation of the country. And outmoded rhetorical appeals to “freedom” and “democracy” and “self-determination” by the USA are no longer even remotely credible anymore in light of 20 years of foreign invasions, failed occupations, and fraudulent presidential elections.
The election of Donald Trump saved Ukraine from invasion. The stealing of the 2020 election from him may doom Ukraine to Russian occupation, which is particularly stupid because Russia doesn’t want to occupy Ukraine. But they will do it if necessary, because they want US troops and US missiles on their borders even less.
Like it or not, Russia not only can, but absolutely will, veto further NATO expansion.