By Walden Bello

What follows is my intervention at a webinar to assess the results of the NATO Summit held in Ankara July 7-8, 2026.  Thanks to the organizers of the No to NATO, No to War Alliance for inviting me.)

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 was an act of international aggression that was rightfully condemned by the United Nations on March 2, 2022, with 147 of 193 member countries approving the resolution.

However, most of the 147 countries that condemned Russia’s aggression have not gone beyond that declaration.

As the New York Times (Feb 23, 2023), put it, “A year on, it’s becoming clearer: While the West’s core coalition remains remarkably solid, it never convinced the rest of the world to isolate Russia…. Instead of cleaving in two, the world has fragmented. A vast middle sees Russia’s invasion as, primarily, a European and American problem. Rather than view it as an existential threat, these countries are largely focused on protecting their own interests amid the economic and geopolitical upheaval caused by the invasion.”

Why has most of the world, including most of the Global South, refused to be drawn further into the conflict, despite the western press’ alarmist depiction of Russia’s intervention as a repeat of Hitler’s marching into Czechoslovakia in 1938.

Let me be clear.  I am not admirer of Putin and his domestic autocratic policies.  However, over the last few years, I, like the rest of the world, have realized that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is much, much more complicated than the western image of it as a case of Russian bullying.

1. First of all, one must take into account the complex historical, political, and cultural factors that surround that conflict.

Ukraine and Russia were once part of the same state, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, they went their separate ways. However, being part of the Soviet Union for over 70 years and of the Russian Empire before the October 1917 Revolution, there have been very close cultural, linguistic, and ethnic ties between Russians and Ukrainians, with significant numbers of Russian speakers in those parts of Ukraine that adjoin Russia. Russian is the most common first language in the Donbass and Crimea regions of Ukraine and the city of Kharkiv, as well as being the predominant language in large cities in the eastern and southern portions of the country. According to one survey, Russian is used at home by 43–46% of the population of the country, a similar proportion to those that use Ukrainian at home.

Moreover, looking at recent events, it is hard to sustain the one sided image of unprovoked Russian aggression. Perhaps the key event that influenced Putin’s controversial annexationist moves was the so-called Euromaidan Uprising in 2014, which overthrew President Viktor Yanukovich, a Putin ally. It is undeniable that Ukrainian fascists played a prominent role in the Euromaidan events, and the Russian government’s claim said that western governments backed the uprising is not without substance.

Shortly after the Euromaidan events, separatist movements in the Donbass region in southeastern Ukraine, where there were large numbers of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, emerged, and Russia backed them.  Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, with Putin saying that this move was justified by the dangers posed by the new Ukrainian regime to the ethnic Russian majority in Crimea. These developments must be seen in the context of moves and countermoves between the Russians and Ukrainians. One can also say that Russia both intervened as well as was pulled in by the ethnic  Russian movements in the Ukraine, and not acting would have created a crisis of legitimacy for him among Russians in Russia. The point I am making is the Ukraine crisis is complex concatenation of events, not a unilinear, one-sided process of Russian aggression.

1. A second major consideration for the Global South’s refusal to be pulled into the Ukraine conflict is that Russia regarded NATO expansion to its borders as an existential threat.

A major concern of Putin and his predecessors was the eastward expansion of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. When the Soviet Bloc fell apart in 1991-92, there were assurances made to the Russians that NATO would not expand eastwards. As then US Secretary of State James Baker told then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Feb 1990, “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the East.” The succeeding US administrations and its allies, however, disregarded concerns and warnings from Russia that its security would be imperiled by NATO’s eastward expansion. Not only were new members from the old Warsaw Pact (the old military alliance of Soviet Bloc countries) admitted, but NATO announced at its summit in Bucharest in 2008 that Georgia and Ukraine would soon join the organization. Shortly after that announcement, Russia invaded Georgia – like Ukraine a former part of the Soviet Union – underlining Russia’s determination that former members of the Soviet Union should not be allowed into NATO.

These warnings, however, went unheeded.

As the Council of Foreign Relations, a forum close to the US government describes it, “Despite remaining a nonmember, Ukraine grew its ties with NATO in the years leading up to the 2022 invasion. Ukraine held annual military exercises with the alliance and, in 2020, became one of just six enhanced security partners, a special status for the bloc’s close nonmember allies. Moreover, Kyiv affirmed its goal to eventually gain full NATO membership. In the weeks leading up to its invasion, Russia made several major security demands of the United States and NATO, including that they cease expanding the alliance, seek Russian consent fort certain NATO deployments, and remove US nuclear weapons from Europe. Alliance leaders responded that they were open to new diplomacy but were unwilling to discuss shutting NATO’s doors to new members.”

1. A third major consideration for skepticism on the part of the Global South is that a great many people in Europe see the Russian threat invoked by the European elites as exaggerated and serves mainly the interests of the Baltic states.

Let me give you, as an example, the opinion of the German intellectual Wolfgang Streeck, probably Europe’s leading sociologist, when I posed the question in an interview with him in Cologne last year: “Is Russia the enemy?”

Let me quote his answer in full.  “I don’t see that. The official rhetoric in Europe is that Russia is the enemy and that in five years’ time, the Russians will be ready to march on Europe. Now this is a picture that is above all spread by the Baltic states [Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania]. The three Baltic countries are very small. They need someone else to fight their wars for them, and this can only be the Germans. They had tried this alliance in the last world war, and it did not end very well for them. They, in fact, wanted German protection so much that they armed several SS regiments fighting Russia under German command and assisted the Nazis in the persecution of the local Jewry. Very much like Ukraine.

“Realistically, it seems totally ridiculous to think that Putin would want to conquer Germany or any other Western European country. In principle, they can sell gas and oil and other resources to the West Europeans and prosper. Why should they want to rule Germany or, for that matter, Finland, if they have a hard time ruling their own country?

“One reason why the Baltics are so excited is that they have sizeable Russian minorities that some of them treat very badly. The tensions with Russia might be more manageable, without these immense preparations for war, if the Russian minorities were given full citizenship and language rights and federal autonomy. That would mean they would no longer call on Moscow to help them against their governments. The worse they treat their Russians, the more Moscow might feel forced to do something for their compatriots.

“It is up to the Baltic states to decide how much pressure to put on their Russian minorities so that at some stage they will turn secessionist or irredentist. Instead, there are wild dreams about getting the West to defeat Russia for the benefit of the smaller nations on the Russian periphery. For example, Kaja Kallas, the former Prime Minister of Estonia, who is now responsible for the foreign policy of the European Union, is said to have once suggested that Russia should be sliced up into four or five different states, and that only then will Europeans—that is, the Baltics—be safe. This, of course, has been tried before, and it turned out to be a disaster, including costing the lives of 15 million Russians alone. I claim that a safe life in Europe and in Germany is only possible if we find an arrangement to coexist in peace with Russia on the Eurasian continent, and this is linked to the bigger question of where Europe should go.”

Streeck reflects a view shared by many informed analysts in Europe.  I asked the same question in an Interview last February with Heikki Patomaki, one of Finland’s leading progressive intellectuals, and his answer was the following:

“It [Streeck’s answer] might be a simplification, but I’m in agreement with its basic thrust. It is true that the Baltic countries, together with Poland, have been very vocal in their criticism of Russia. They’ve been able to change EU policies as well as shape the general perception in Germany. They are totally negative about Russia and everything about Russia. This has reduced the space for any different thinking.

“It is concerning that Finland has begun to follow the Baltic political line. For many decades it was the other way around. Finland was showing the way to do things reasonably. And the Baltic countries looked to Finland as a model and an aspiration. Now all of a sudden, it’s the other way around. And this is problematic.”

The NATO Ankara Summit is over, and, from a survey of the preliminary results, I do not think NATO is adopting a less aggressive posture.  I think it’s fairly clear by now that the only solution to the Ukraine crisis is a diplomatic solution because efforts to resolve things militarily by both sides over the last four and a half years have failed and both sides are bogged down in a stalemate.

A diplomatic solution will involve concessions on both sides, from Russia and the Ukraine.  Of course, at the beginning of negotiations, both sides will assert hardline positions.  NATO’s position translates to Russia making all the concessions.  This is unrealistic.  Precisely the role of negotiations is to forge a compromise between two parties.

Certainly, NATO’s position of fighting to the last Ukrainian is untenable, short-sighted, if not immoral.  It is time to end this war that has killed at least 150,000 Ukrainians and at least 223,000 Russians, resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians on both sides, and millions of Ukrainians fleeing their country.

Finally, Europe’s stance of keeping the US in the game is also worrisome, because the US is conditioning its support of Ukraine on the European countries’ spending five per cent of their GDP on armaments, which will create tremendous economic dislocations and will only result in further militarization of Europe.