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Comment by Paradigma11 | Hacker News Reader

Here is Putin 2002:

“I am absolutely convinced that Ukraine will not shy away from the processes of expanding interaction with NATO and the Western allies as a whole. Ukraine has its own relations with NATO; there is the Ukraine-NATO Council. At the end of the day the decision [on Ukraine joining NATO] is to be made by NATO and Ukraine. It is a matter for those two partners.”

Why should nations be beholden to verbal agreements that were never ratified by their elected officials, between parties that didn't exist any more in the case of the Warshaw pact and whose legal successor nation official stated they had no problem with it.

Thats silly.

Should NATO have never had any talks with Russia about a possible NATO membership because of that verbal agreement with the leader of the Warshaw Pact Gorbachev?

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That was in 2002, when it looked like after years of cold war U.S. and Russia can finally become good allies. That was before U.S. along with a group of other (mostly NATO) countries invaded Iraq in 2003 without any mandate in U.N. and which Russia has opposed to and before the invasion of Libya in 2011, before U.S. carried out Arab Spring in 2010-2012 and before U.S. carried out colour revolutions, especially Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and... Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004.

It is not a secret at all that U.S. carried those out and then it became quite clear that U.S. installs marionette regimes here and there and one of the places was... Ukraine.

Right after all those Russo-American relations going up, up and up merely some years ago.

Russia didn't like being stabbed in the back at all.

You can't really bring non binding, non serious agreements that were never put in writing or ratified and that all parties declared no longer relevant back from the dead and feign moral outrage. That's ridiculous.

What does "legally binding" do good at all? There are no other laws other than the rule of the strength.

U.S. was strong for a long time. It did whatever it liked.

Now Russia restored some of its strength to the point it can show others that sometimes you have to listen to when a bear warns you (quite calmly and nicely first).

For one, if it is ratified in a democratic nation that means that the people had a say in it through their elected representatives.

That way the other party knows that this agreement has some backing and staying power.

Not some dude spouting some ideas to counterparts during very very turbulent times.

Who decides if a nation is democratic or not?

Many people (even Americans) claim U.S. is not a democracy. Every country has corruption to some degree. The only backing and staying power there is - is the force a country has and its willingness to use it to defend something.

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