R Krishna Das
Ukraine is crying foul that NATO ditched it after Russia launched a full-scale war against the country. Ironically, “invader” Vladimir Putin is also eager that NATO forces must come in to help Ukraine.
If foreign affairs experts are to be believed, Putin had a larger global plan in mind when he ordered his forces to invade Ukraine that began on Thursday. If his strategy goes right, the world will head for a global war.
Putin doesn’t need Ukraine. And this he has been claiming time and again since Russian forces entered. The Russian President has categorically said he did not want Ukraine. “He wants those countries to stand up, then it’ll be a world war (nuclear war); something North Korea and China also want,” one of the diplomats observed.
NATO and the West are quiet because they know that’s what Putin wants. NATO has reasons to escape, its countries will not engage in warfare against Russia unless a member nation is attacked.
Putin has cast aside international condemnation and sanctions and has warned other countries that any attempt to interfere will lead to “consequences you have never seen.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has castigated the West and NATO for what he called left alone in defending the nation. In an emotional message to the country on the second day of the Russian invasion on Friday, he said he had contacted 27 nations but none dared to come forward and help Ukraine.
The other nations have their compulsion. A move will surely result in a global nuclear war that will be more devastating.
As Russia and the West face off on Ukraine in perhaps the biggest crisis on the European continent since World War II, the globe’s two largest emerging powers, China and India, seem to be deliberately remaining largely neutral.
