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On Feb 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the West for three decades of broken pledges and NATO's expansion, vowing to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine and ordering a "special military operation". In the West, the speech was portrayed as a conspiracy fantasy.
On Feb 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the West for three decades of broken pledges and NATO's expansion, vowing to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine and ordering a "special military operation". In the West, the speech was portrayed as a conspiracy fantasy.
We cannot live under the threat of nuclear blackmail, underlines Brendan Simms, director at the Centre for Geopolitics and professor of the History of European International Relations at the University of Cambridge.
The Russia-Ukraine war was not warranted. Ukrainians despair for peace. Russia needs security. China offers development. But Blackwater, US, NATO and the far-right Ukrainian paramilitaries seek something very different.
Putin alone is to blame for the war in Ukraine. Still, some opponents of NATO expansion were strikingly prescient.