Russia, Ukraine and NATO

 

Russia, Ukraine and NATO

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

It may seem presumptuous on my part to pretend to be an international affairs expert and write on such an issue which does not directly concern India, and which may seem to be basically none of India’s business, or, to put it more mildly, it may be seen to be an issue on which India should remain neutral since both Russia and Ukraine are friends of India. 

But I do not think so. To me India always comes first. And there are some countries which have more or less always stood by India. Three of them are Israel, Russia and erstwhile (Saddam Hussein’s) Iraq. Indians and Hindus (including, and particularly, those who claim to speak for Hindus) generally seem to have no sense of loyalty even to India and Hindus, so it is not to be wondered if they should see no reason to have any loyalties or particularly friendly feelings and sympathies towards those countries which have always generally stood by India (to the extent possible for them). Many vocal Hindus and “Hindutvavādī” people, in fact, have fallen prey to woke propaganda in matters concerning Israel and Russia, and express themselves like woke activists in the matter of these two countries.

[Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had indeed long ago been abandoned to the dogs by “Hindutvavādī” politicians, and it is believed that the Vajpayee government was actively mulling the idea of allowing U.S. war-planes to take off from Indian soil at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq based on false claims of Saddam Hussein possessing or developing chemical, biological and nuclear WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction).

Indeed, “Hindutvavādī” politicians have always been fickle in their foreign policies. In my article “Hindus, Hindutva, the BJP and TINA”, I wrote the following:

“An example of the BJP's brainlessness as well as unprincipled attitude was Atal Bihari Vajpayee's speech at Shivaji Park in Mumbai during the campaigning for the 1980 elections. One of his criticisms was that Charan Singh had apparently said (in an election speech) that India should establish diplomatic relations with Israel and cooperate with that nation in developing our agriculture and dairying industries. Vajpayee's grouse was "Why had he never spoken about establishing relations with Israel before? He must explain his newfound love for Israel", thereby implying that it was in some way an election stunt. Although during that particular election, we were pro-Janata party and anti-Charan Singh, I found this extremely disgusting: Charan Singh had never, to my knowledge criticized Israel before, or opposed relations with that nation, so what was wrong if he now spoke of this? On the other hand, the Jana Sangh had always claimed to stand for friendly relations with Israel, but after merging into the Janata Party, the erstwhile Jana Sangh leaders had suddenly become critics of Israel. It was Vajpayee who had to explain his change of attitude, and not Charan Singh!

A few days later, I also attended Charan Singh's rally at the same venue. It became a case of "I went to boo, and stayed to cheer": to my utter surprise, Charan Singh's speech contained not a single derogatory reference to his foes, and was in fact a long and frankly boring speech on rural and agricultural issues. The sincerity of the man shone through, and although we continued to be against him, I felt a genuine respect for Charan Singh, especially in contrast to the playing-to-the-gallery Vajpayee.”

Ultimately, it was under the leadership of Congress PM Narasimha Rao that India established diplomatic relations with Israel].

Now, Russia (along with Israel, of course) has become the special target of woke activists who control large sections of the media in both India as well as the west. Indian media groups seems to be trying to outdo each other in their blatantly woke reports on Russia, Israel (and also on Trump). And, at the moment, when there is immediate talk about a likely ceasefire which could put an end to the continuous slaughter of soldiers and civilians and continuous destruction of cities, towns and infrastructure, these woke media are busy propagating the accusation (against Russia) that while Zelenskyy is ready for (and has already practically agreed to) a ceasefire, Putin is imposing “a series of conditions that could delay or derail any agreement”.

And the conditions that Putin is insisting on (on the ground that a ceasefire has no meaning unless it should lead to "an enduring peace and remove the root causes of this crisis") are as follows, according to the Guardian: “These demands could include the demilitarisation of Ukraine, an end to western military aid and a commitment to keeping Kyiv out of NATO. Moscow may also push for a ban on foreign troop deployments in Ukraine and international recognition of Putin’s claims to Crimea and the four Ukrainian regions Russia annexed in 2022.

Putin could also revisit some of his broader demands from 2021, which go beyond Ukraine, including a call for NATO to halt the deployment of weapons in member states that joined after 1997, when the alliance began expanding into former communist countries.

Many in Europe fear these conditions for peace could weaken the west’s ability to increase its military presence and could allow Putin to expand his influence across the continent”

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/13/russia-wary-of-proposed-ukraine-ceasefire-plan-as-us-talks-begin

 

Are these conditions unwarranted or unfair?

 

It must be remembered that the world was divided into two main powerful mutually antagonistic blocs called the Eastern Bloc (led by the USSR) and the Western Bloc (led by western European countries and the USA) after the second world war, with a third neutral or near-neutral (if often seen to be closer to the Eastern Bloc) bloc of countries called the Non-Aligned Bloc (led by India and Yugoslavia). The heyday period of these warring blocs, 1947-1991, is called the Cold War period.

 

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Association) was the main militant grouping in the Western Bloc, consisting initially, in 1949, of twelve members: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Two more, Greece and Turkey, joined in 1952, West Germany in 1955, and Spain in 1982.

 

This Cold War period started crumbling with Perestroika, a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associated with CPSU general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (who came to power in 1985) and his glasnost (meaning "transparency") policy reform.

 

In 1986 itself, Gorbachev announced his new policies of Perestroika and Glasnost, and shortly after this, the first big event was the merger of East Bloc country East Germany and West Bloc country West Germany on October 3 1990, preceded by the fall of the Berlin Wall which separated the two Germanies on November 9 1989.

 

At the time of the unification of Germany, in 1990, in the talks held between the leaders of the Western Bloc and the USSR, the USSR was repeatedly assured by the Western Bloc leaders that NATO (basically seen as an anti-USSR alliance) would not be expanded further eastwards into eastern Europe to include former members of the Eastern Bloc, and on the basis of this repeated assurance, the USSR allowed Unified Germany to choose whether or not it would be a part of NATO  (which it chose to be):

 

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

 

 

On December 25-26 1991, the Soviet Union (USSR) itself officially broke up into fifteen sovereign countries. Of these fifteen (not counting the eight Asiatic and Transcaucasian erstwhile Soviet Socialist Republics, i.e. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which were well to the east of Europe), there were, apart from Russia itself, six erstwhile Soviet Socialist Republics in Europe: Ukraine, Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova. And, after the formation of united Germany (which joined NATO) there were, apart from Russia itself, six Central and East European countries left in the Eastern Bloc: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania.

 

In spite of the original assurance that NATO would not be expanded eastwards, the following eight among these twelve former SSRs and Eastern Bloc countries were gradually inducted into NATO:

Hungary and Poland in 1999.

Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania in 2004.

Albania in 2009.

 

Of the remaining four, one country Czechosovakia split into many smaller countries of which the two main ones, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, joined NATO in 1999 and 2004 respectively.

 

Yugoslavia, a former Communist country, which had not been a part of the Eastern Bloc, but one of the founding members of the Non-Aligned Bloc, also split into smaller countries, of which four, Slovenia (2004),  Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017) and North Macedonia (2020) became members of NATO.

 

Only three of the twelve erstwhile SSRs and Eastern Bloc countries (and the three easternmost of them within Europe) are not a part of NATO yet. Of these, Moldova is committed to a neutral position by its Constitution, but, since 1992, has co-operated indirectly with NATO by becoming a member of the NACC (North Atlantic Cooperation Council). So, basically, only two former SSRs are still out of the NATO circle: Ukraine and Belarus, both being the closest to Russia in their languages and culture, and therefore whose absorption into the anti-Russian NATO is most vehemently opposed by Russia. As per the Wikipedia article on Russia-Ukraine Relations:  “Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus claim their heritage from Kievan Rus' (Kyivan Rus'), a polity that united most of the East Slavic and some Finnic tribes and adopted Byzantine Orthodoxy in the ninth to eleventh centuries. According to old Rus chronicles, Kyiv (Kiev), the capital of modern Ukraine, was proclaimed the Mother of Rus Cities, as it was the capital of the powerful late medieval state of Rus”.^[

 

Of all its earlier European SSRs and East Bloc allies, Belarus is the only country still aligned with Russia. That leaves the strategically important Ukraine. NATO attempts to completely encircle and isolate Russia, and to station NATO forces on almost every inch of Russia’s European borders have been concentrating on Ukraine since decades: Ukraine  first joined NATO's Partnership for Peace in 1994 and the NATO-Ukraine Commission in 1997, then agreed to the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan in 2002 and entered into NATO's Intensified Dialogue program in 2005.

 

In view of this background of treachery and trickery, there is nothing more hypocritical than supporters of Ukraine (or rather, haters of Russia) pretending to take the high moral ground in matters concerning Russia and Ukraine, by treating Russia as the aggressor and Ukraine as a hapless victim, and wanting the Russia-Ukraine war to go on and on till it manages to spark off World War III. Russia (like Israel in another context) has the full moral right to refuse to allow itself to be wiped out by its enemies, and to take every possible step necessary to prevent such an eventuality from taking place. And of all hypocritical critics, Indians and Hindus who take this anti-Russian stance are the most hypocritical of all.

 

I will stop at this point. As I wrote at the very beginning of the article, it may seem presumptuous on my part to pretend to be an international affairs expert and write on such an issue which does not directly concern India or Hindus. But it does concern India and Hindus. And most particularly Hindus, who have always been the target of similar hypocritical pseudo-moral attacks by powerful forces who deny Hindus the moral right to refuse to allow themselves to be wiped out by their enemies.  And for those Hindus who wax high moral indignation about the Russian annexation of parts of Ukraine (or about the plight of Palestinians in Gaza or elsewhere), how much such moral indignation have they ever actively felt the need to express about the parts of India annexed by China and Pakistan (or about the plight of Hindus in Kashmir and Manipur)?

My readers may or may not agree with all the above. But I felt the need to express my views on this subject.