“Not an inch east of Europe.” Supporters of President Vladimir Putin always pull this phrase from 1990 out of the hat to say that the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and the one that has been ongoing since February of last year are a reaction by Moscow to the famine of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO), which would never have fulfilled the agreement signed between Western leaders at the time and the then leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.
But, in fact, did the gentlemen who appear gathered in the image above agree with this? In 2014, when Putin used this preposterous argument to invade Ukraine for the first time and take over the Crimea region, Gorbachev stepped in to say that Putin’s complaint was based on a myth.
Gorbachev, who did not grant amnesty for what he defined as the shortcomings of the West and especially the United States in the post-Cold War period, dismantled the farce. But what good is the testimony of those who carried out the negotiations if there is a story so well put together to validate anti-American sentiments?
This week, PT deputy Arlindo Chinaglia gave a speech to the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Commission of the Chamber of Deputies that appears to have been written in Moscow. Chinaglia started with a joke that, when questioned by a judge, a bank robber acknowledged the crime, but justified it: “They robbed me first”, referring to the bank as the original thief.
The joke enabled Chinaglia to resurrect the phrase “not an inch towards the east of Europe” to openly say that Putin is the victim of history. That the breach of an alleged pact signed at the time of the reunification of Germany is at the origin of the evil; despite Putin’s recurrent warnings that he would react, NATO and the United States decided to “pay the price”.
Chinaglia spoke for the leadership of a block of leftist parties that orbit the PT. Chinaglia repeated what former president Dilma Rousseff had already expressed at various times since the beginning of the invasion. Chinaglia repeated what President Lula, who postulates himself as a peacemaker, has already verbalized. Chinaglia parroted Putin’s propaganda, which, by the way, does not only win over PT members and the like. She is also very successful at the opposite pole of the Brazilian political spectrum, which, of course, is shaped like a horseshoe.
Putin did not build his propaganda from scratch. He is supported declassified documents that deal with the negotiations at the time, which, yes, went through the theme of the non-expansion of NATO, but which never became a central theme. Gorbachev himself mentions the USSR’s lack of concern about NATO’s role, since the world that was taking shape at that moment pointed to an integration of interests in which his USSR was getting closer to the West and not leaving for a confrontation.
This, by the way, is a central point for understanding the context in which the negotiations and promises took place.
It was the twilight of the Cold War and negotiations were taking place with a partner that would cease to exist the following year, at a pace that perhaps none of the actors involved expected it to be so fast.
In its last breaths, Gorbachev’s USSR was not looking for expansion. In line with the Soviet leader, the Americans who witnessed those days count that the expectation was that each country would take its own path. And with the victory of the West in the Cold War, it was more than natural for the countries that broke away from the USSR to reorient themselves in search of resources for their development and reintegration into the free world.
Putin never accepted this. One way or another, he worked to stoke internal resentments, reaching out and exerting his influence in as many former Soviet republics as possible.
Chinaglia and Putin’s other parrots don’t talk about when Ukraine was barred from NATO in 2008. They also don’t make a point of understanding that the Russian invasion of 2014 was an extreme reaction by Putin to punish a Ukraine that didn’t accept to be under the command of a ventriloquist’s dummy commanded by Moscow. In 2014, Putin said no and the then Ukrainian president followed orders not to go ahead with the process of joining the European Union, contrary to the wishes of an entire country.
Putin’s puppet fell and he then decided to invade Crimea to “save” a portion of the neighboring country from the evil fascists of Kiev who wanted to be part of the European Union.
Ukraine thus learned, in practice, the lessons of Putin’s expansionism. Your reaction to the current invasion is an act of resistance which, had it not occurred, the country would have been annexed by now. To say that the Ukrainians are just as responsible for the war as the Russians – or even solely responsible – speaks volumes to the character, moral values, or at least the sanity of those who embrace this type of argument.
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