TRUE OR FAKE. Is NATO responsible for the war in Ukraine?

For Vladimir Putin, NATO has a share of responsibility in the war in Ukraine. Since the end of the 1990s, the alliance has indeed gradually expanded towards eastern Europe, integrating Poland and then the Baltic countries. If the Russian authorities now speak of treason, this expansion was at the time tolerated in fact. In 1997, the Russian leader Boris Yeltsin signed with NATO a text entitled “founding act”. According to Elie Tenenbaum, director of the Center for Security Studies at Ifri, the text “did not in any way imply the non-enlargement of the alliance“.

A defensive posture

It should also be remembered that NATO has a defensive vocation: if a member is attacked, the others come to its defence. Putin criticizes in particular the presence of military equipment – ​​such as anti-missile equipment in the Baltic countries. Since the annexation of Crimea, 4,500 NATO soldiers have been mobilized there. “These preposition forces are insufficient to fight directly against an attack. Their function is to show that in the event of an attack, self-defense will be invoked.“, explains Édouard Jolly, researcher in armed conflict theory at Irsem.

The invasion of Ukraine can hardly be considered preventive, because the alliance did not consider attacking Russia militarily.