Why the West doesn't supply Ukraine with everything it needs, explained by Reznikov
Oleksii Reznikov (Photo:REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis)
The West doesn't provide Ukraine with all of the supplies it needs because it has long been guided by a rule to avoid provoking Russia, Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov said in an interview with Spanish outlet La Razon on April 16.
This trend reached its nadir in 2008, when former German chancellor Angela Merkel convinced Europe and the U.S. to reject Ukraine and Georgia's track to NATO, Reznikov stated.
"The West has long lived in the dogma of not provoking Russia,” he said.
“It became a tangible reality in 2008, during the NATO summit in Bucharest.”
The possibility of NATO accession for Ukraine and Georgia back then was very real, as the U.S. and majority of European countries supported this move, the minister said.
"It was the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, that opposed [Ukraine’s accession] and convinced the others,” he added.
Germany and France blocked a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia at a NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008. Merkel and then French President Nicolas Sarkozy took this step out of fears of escalation with Russia, the defense minister explained.
Then came the occupation of some areas in Georgia, the Salisbury Poisonings, explosions in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, the occupation of Crimea in 2014, and the Russian military invasion into Ukraine's Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, he said.
"The second mistake (of the West) was to believe that if there was a military confrontation, a small Soviet army would face a much larger one and be defeated,” he concluded.
“Well, we are not a Soviet country with a Soviet army.”
The head of the German parliament’s defense committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, said on March 3 that Merkel shares responsibility for Russia's war against Ukraine because of decisions she took while in office.
Merkel claimed she still considers her decision to reject Ukraine from NATO the right one, even after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
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