Should Ukraine join NATO: in California, experts start a heated debate on this topic

Francis Fukuyama, an American philosopher and senior fellow at the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, believes that Ukraine or Georgia is unlikely to be offered NATO membership. The scientist expressed his opinion during the conference "Democracy in Ukraine in thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union", which was held on December 8 at Stanford.

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According to him, NATO was originally created as a military alliance, and the accession of the Baltic states to the Alliance was primarily due to the desire to prevent the possible occupation of these states by Russia. However, since today there are Russian troops in Ukraine, its entry into NATO would mean that, according to Article 5 of the Organization's Charter, the rest of the Alliance should automatically go to war with Moscow. Fukuyama explained that NATO countries would not dare to take such a step.

«We must think about increasing military aid to Ukraine, including new supplies of javelins, but Ukraine’s joining NATO is unrealistic today."He said.

An expert at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, a former US Ambassador to Ukraine, agreed with Francis Fukuyama Stephen Pifer... He noted that Russia cannot impede Ukraine's association and cooperation with NATO and other Western alliances, but has the right to object to the deployment of American weapons at its borders.

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Such statements provoked a rather harsh reaction from another conference participant, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine. Alexey Goncharuk.

«Our goal is not to join NATO, but to receive reliable protection. Our allies still do not take the Russian threat seriously enough, and in the end they will have to pay a triple price for it. The sanctions imposed on Russia today obviously do not work. It is necessary to change the very mechanism of their imposition. Hope that this time the West will not get cold feet", - summed up the express prime minister.

Nevertheless, all the participants in the conference agreed that Ukraine plays a key role in ensuring the security of the entire Western world, and allies must do all they can to help it defend itself.

Regarding the information about a possible direct invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, Steven Pifer suggested that Putin himself had not yet decided what exactly he would do.

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«I believe that in this situation, President Biden did what he had to do - he set a high price for Putin for such an invasion."He added.

Recall: at a meeting held at Stanford University last month, Alexey Goncharuk saidthat Ukraine's NATO membership is capable of deterring Russia from further aggression, while the lack of such protection, on the contrary, prompts the Kremlin to take such actions. He proposed to apply sanctions with the help of pre-developed legal mechanisms, according to which the punishment is known in advance and is inevitably imposed in response to every aggressive action by Russia.

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