Nato’s promise to one day admit Ukraine into the fold was an “ugly compromise”, but was not to blame for the threat of conflict with Russia, the military’s alliance’s former secretary-general has said.
Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who as head of Nato declared in 2008 that Ukraine “will become a member”, told the Financial Times that Vladimir Putin’s demands for the alliance to abandon that pledge was a false pretext for the Russian president’s “revanchist crusade”.
“He’s a guy whose world broke apart in 1989,” said de Hoop Scheffer, referring to the tumultuous events of that year, which included the fall of the Berlin Wall, that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union. “Whatever Nato would have agreed . . . Putin would be the same Putin.”
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