NEW YORK (Aftenposten): In the back room, large and important countries opposed. Nevertheless, Ukraine was promised membership in the world’s most powerful military alliance.
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NEWS ANALYSIS: Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a number of demands against the United States and NATO. One of them is a guarantee that Ukraine will not join the military alliance.
Here’s the paradox: Putin will get what he wants – at least for the foreseeable future.
But NATO cannot say this out loud. They have given Ukraine a clear and distinct promise.
The headache comes from the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008. Seven countries in eastern Europe had joined NATO four years earlier. Now US President George W. Bush, who was in his final year, wanted to show the world that the alliance’s door was still open.
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