Did Nato get Putin and Ukraine wrong? Former head of Nato explains

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Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia’s first military mobilisation since World War Two. He also warned he would use “all means [he has]” to defend Russian territory, raising concerns around the world and saying it wasn’t a bluff.

With the United Nations General Assembly taking place this week, Nato leaders attacked Putin’s announcement. But Nato-Russia relations weren’t always quite so frosty.

In this episode we speak to Lord Robertson, the tenth Secretary General of that alliance, who met Putin 9 times and says that Putin even discussed joining Nato at one point in their conversations.

We ask him whether Putin has changed or whether he and the West completely miscalculated what the Russian leader was up to.

Sources: AP Archive, CNBC
Produced by: Freya Pickford and Nina Hodgson

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22 thoughts on “Did Nato get Putin and Ukraine wrong? Former head of Nato explains”

  1. The position he is presenting is; Everything WE do is good, any answer or action from the other side is wrong!
    From that, we could justify any action that we judge to be in our interest, be it economic and political control, up to war with anyone.
    Whenever we talk about NATO, we should remember the first principle of it's foundation: NATO is created to keep Germany down and Russia out of Europe. From that point of view, the recent action from the US military make sense, as far as destroying Europe would make sense.

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  3. Putin was very open to the West, but got burnt over and over. Thats why you have what you have now. I'll remind again, based on Putins 2007 Munich's speach, thats when he closed that open door. To pretend his actions are based on his personal "maniacal" trates is shallow intellectually. Putin does whats best for Russia and to blame him from prospective of the West is silly.

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  4. A few weeks ago my college at work from Poland told me that Ukraine joined the Nazi-Germany to attack Poland during WW2. I was shocked to learn this,we dont have this in our history books in Norway at school. Now i see both Russia and Nato in a whole new light. Both Nato and the west support this fascist-government and i understand Putin much better now.

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  6. Putin will never join nato
    He was being pretentious I think 🤔

    But Putin is a thief
    He literally stole 4 territories .. then to Keep them he cries nuclear weapons ..
    That's exactly what Putin does ..
    He's just a thief !
    Question I have is can nato force all nuclear weapons be surrendered !
    We did this to Sadam !

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  7. He said…we provoked Russia into attacking Ukraine. He also said..this must go on until Ukraine wins. ——- always listen carefully and make up your own minds. Leaders are there to serve the people make sure leaders tell you the truth.

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  10. Post-911 polite Putin offered his condolences to the U.$., and wanted to help in the 'War On Terror', but he backed the LAWFUL U.N. Resolution AGAINST the U.$. ILLEGAL invasion and CRIMINAL War on Iraq.

    In Moscow and Brussels late-2001 peaceful pro-NATO Putin met NATO Chief Robertson twice.

    01:46 "We resumed NATO-Russia relations which had been fractured by what we had to do in Kosovo, and therefore we were talking to each other, but we were talking past each other at that time. So, Putin came in and simply said, 'I want to resume relations with NATO, step by step.' The relationship had been pretty well frozen, I think that's what you would describe it as, and the first move came from him. He'd not long taken over (from Yeltsin) and a message came through that if we wanted to come to Moscow then the answer would 'Yes!' Now that was a big change because up until then they didn't want to know NATO at all. Their ambassador in NATO was pretty obstructive, he was an old 'Cold Warrior'. So the signal that I got was that if you were to make an approach it would be favourably received. So, I suppose yes, he decided that he was going to repair the relationship and try, and wanted to build a firmer relationship with NATO."

    03:35 "At the first meeting (in Moscow) Vladimir Putin clearly said, 'I want Russia to be part of Western Europe'…at the 2nd meeting (in Brussels) he said..'When are you going to invite Russia to join NATO?'"

    06:09 "I started to sort of reach out and engage them in so many activities that they basically couldn't fight with us.. but after I left NATO (in 2003), the American administration, the Bush administration lost any interest basically in doing business with Russia, they saw it as a threat..they didn't really want to make it part of the overall partnership. I think we missed an opportunity at that time because I think it's what he wanted, and we could have grabbed hold of him!"

    14:48 "There were people in Moscow who didn't believe they were going to invade. People who told me that it was simply muscle-flexing to put the troops round there, and I hold a view, that not everybody shares, that maybe we provoked him into making that ultimate decision because we kept saying (our government and the American government, other people kept saying) 'We know you're going to invade, you're going to invade, you're going to invade'. We said it over and over again, and …a very senior Russian who was in London before the invasion said to me quietly, "You know, if they keep saying that, everyday he doesn't invade he loses a bit of credibility'."

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