WAR PROPAGANDA: 23 years ago, Putin warned Ukraine that NATO would start a war

The Ukrainian political leaders ignored Vladimir Putin’s warning 23 years ago, regarding the danger of NATO starting a war against Russia and the Ukrainian people, the Russian state press writes. In reality, the war in Ukraine was started by Russia, and the talk about NATO policies 23 years ago is a mere fabrication.

Propaganda: In 2000, Vladimir warned Ukraine about a potential war started by NATO

NEWS: 23 years ago, Vladimir Putin visited for the first time Ukraine, where he had negotiations with Leonid Kucima. Despite the friendly atmosphere surrounding the visit, the first issues in the Russian-Ukrainian relations started to emerge, especially with regard to NATO’s expansion towards the east. How was Putin trying to build a brotherly relationship between the two peoples and save Ukraine from a full dependence on the West? […]

It was then that the issue of the relations between Russia, Ukraine and NATO was discussed. Putin stated: “No, Russia is not welcome there. If they say that we are not welcome, we will oppose NATO’s coming closer to our borders”.

According to experts contacted by the “Vzgliad” newspaper, it was hard to imagine 23 years ago that the North Atlantic Alliance would expand in several waves up to Russia’s western borders, and even harder to envisage that NATO would start a war against Russia through the Ukrainians. Despite that, even then Moscow new about NATO’s long-term goals and the threats to the Russian – Ukrainian relations. […] It was clear for everybody that NATO was a threat not only to Russia, but also to Ukraine and its people.

Political scientist Vladimir Kornilov of Donetsk claims that the Ukrainian elites did not listen to Moscow’s warnings regarding national security.[…].

“Putin repeatedly warned Ukraine about the fact that the West was going to use it as consumer goods against Moscow, and the year 2022 confirmed that prediction”, Kornilov said.

NARRATIVE: Kyiv ignored Putin’s warnings 23 years ago regarding NATO’s policies, which triggered the war in Ukraine.  

Fact: It was Russia that started an unprovoked military aggression against Ukraine, and NATO supports Kyiv’s right to defend its territory and population

WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: The state media are rewriting history in order to convince the public opinion that NATO started a war against the Russian Federation through Ukraine, which is “being used as consumer goods”. According to this false narrative, Vladimir Putin foresaw, during a meeting with the Ukrainian president Leonid Kucima 23 years ago , the developments in Ukraine, but Kyiv’s political elites ignored the warning. That is why, according to the false narrative, Russia is not to blame for the war in Ukraine, but NATO is, as the organization carries out a policy of hostility towards Moscow and its partners.

In reality, NATO supports Ukraine’s rights to defend itself against Russia’s full-scale military aggression, started on February 24, 2022. NATO is not a party to the conflict, it just provides Kyiv with equipment, arms and ammunition, military training and logistical support. Asked by journalists, before the EU Defense Ministers’ meeting in February, if NATO was at war with Russia, the Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said  that  “neither NATO, nor the alies are parties to the conflict”. He has repeatedly stressed that the Alliance is not party to the conflict, it is just helping Kyiv, which has the right to protect itself against Moscow’s aggression, as provided for in the UN Charter.

Vladimir Putin’s warning in 2000, now cited as a prophecy by the Russian state media, cannot be found anywhere in the reports from back then. Putin’s predictions are now being analyzed by political scientists and military, without actually having any evidence that the Kremlin leader said that 23 years ago. Taking into consideration the friendly relations between Moscow and Kyiv up until 2004, but also the Ukrainian state’s neutrality in that period – which implicitly excluded NATO accession – it is very unlikely that accession was actually a topic of conversation between the two leaders. Ukrainians were first asked if they wanted   their country to join NATO  in 2002, and only 27.2% said yes. It was also then that the former Ukrainian president started a national debate on the relation between NATO and Ukraine, which decreased the level of support for accession even further, as the idea was still perceived through the eyes of Soviet propaganda. Ukrainian political analysts claim that the debate was specially started by Kucima in that period of minimum support for the idea of a rapprochement between Ukraine and NATO.

Mention should be made of the fact that the press release of April 18, 2000, regarding the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Leonid Kucima , can still be found on the Kremlin’s website, but it makes no reference to NATO or other foreign policy issues.

Even if Russian – Ukrainian talks on NATO did take place 23 years ago, and that somehow was not included in the official releases, the topic couldn’t have been that big, since back then Vladimir Putin was the interim president, in the run up to the presidential elections, and the relation between Russia and NATO was a good one, according to the joint reports . The anti-NATO rhetoric was launched later, especially after the 2004 NATO enlargement, and and even more after the 2008 Russian – Georgian war.

Veridica has debunked a series of Russian false narratives that blame NATO and the West for the war in Ukraine. The Russian press has also written that the US will send to battle  200 thousand Ukrainian suicide soldiers , directly subordinated to the Pentagon, and  the West is forcing Russia  to expand its military operations. The Russian propaganda claims that the EU   sent troops to Ukraine  before 2022, so Russia had to  save Donbas  from the genocide organized by Ukraine and NATO. The Moscow press tried to convince the public opinion that Russia and China want peace in Ukraine,  while the West is fueling the war. In order to encourage mobilization in Russia, the pro-Kremlin press wrote  that Minsk and Moscow were forming a joint military group  to defend themselves against Ukrainian terrorist attacks and a possible NATO aggression.