Mustapha Tossa
Today, NATO stands at a crossroads in the way it is handling the Russian military operations in Ukraine. It either lets things go at their current pace and prolongs these operations or provides qualitative military support to Ukraine and helps it determine the fate of these operations.
Today, NATO’s stances are under scathing criticism from both Russia and Ukraine. On the one hand, Moscow accuses the NATO leadership of aiming to dismantle and weaken Russia and end its military and strategic role in the region and the world; on the other hand, Kyiv blames the NATO leadership for being reluctant to provide quality weapons through which the fate of these Russian operations taking place on Ukrainian soil can be sealed.
The NATO leadership justifies its current approach by helping the Ukrainians defend themselves, but it does not want to be defined as a part of this conflict, hence the growing controversy that accompanied the possibility of some NATO member countries providing heavy attack tanks to Ukraine and the great reluctance of these countries to provide top-class warplanes to the Ukrainian army.
NATO’s political approach, inspired by the United States and some European countries, is that military aid should be provided to the Ukrainians while keeping an open mind to sitting around the negotiation table with Russian President Vladimir Putin, thus, the strategic reluctance not to walk into the zone of no return to diplomatic solutions arose.
This controversy took over the scene after the anniversary of the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war passed, and there are no signs of diplomatic solutions and settlements in the near future. On the contrary, there are indications that the world has entered into a long-term confrontation between Russia and the West.
Among these signs are the surprise visit of US President Joe Biden to Kyiv and the rising solidarity tone expressed toward the Ukrainian leadership and military.
Other new signs have been revealed by China, which has so far been observing the developments of this war, where Beijing showed support to Moscow; Western sources say that this support may go to the extent of providing Chinese military assistance to Vladimir Putin. The Chinese authorities have denied this to date, expressing their intention to take a mediation role to try to put an end to this war.
Another sign of escalation is the decision of the Russian authorities to suspend their participation in the international security treaty New START, under which signatory countries pledge to erase the specter of resorting to nuclear weapons to resolve crises.
A year has passed since this war broke out, which contributed to a new geopolitical rewriting of alliances. It caused a stifling economic crisis and unbearable inflation in some countries. A war began with a Russian invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow believed would settle within a few days, but because of the American and European military and financial support for the Ukrainians, this invasion turned into a costly war for all parties involved in it.