> > It’s not even that there was absolutely no active process of joining NATO when Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2014 and started all this. No; if Ukraine

> > It’s not even that there was absolutely no active process of joining NATO when Russia attacked Ukraine in February 2014 and started all this. No; if Ukraine wants to join NATO, that’s entirely Ukraine’s decision. Russia has no say in it. Ukraine is sovereign and can join any military alliance it wants. Just as Russia is free to do so. > NATO stated in the 2008 Bucharest Summit that “Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance” and reiterated that statement in the 2021 Brussels Summit. I didn’t even remember those details, it was easy to find with google and a vague idea that NATO had shown interest in Ukraine. A little bit more competent Googling would fill in the context you’ve clearly missed: (1) The 2008 statement was a way of mollifying Ukraine after acceding to Russia’s demand that Ukraine and Georgia be denied NATO Membership Action Plans at the 2008 summit. (Russia responded, by the way, to this accession to their demands by invading Georgia. Might have done the same to the Ukraine soon after, except by the time they were at a stable point with Georgia, they’d already managed to get a Russia-friendly government in Ukraine.) (2) Ukraine publicly abandoned any interest in a foreign military alliance between the 2008 summit and the 2014 invasion by Russia. (3) Ukraine abandoned its neutrality stance and restarted attempts to join NATO only after the 2014 invasion. (4) The 2021 statement was, again, a way of putting a nice face for Ukraine on NATO again rejecting Ukraine’s attempts to join in the near term.