Merkel Said to Reject Ukraine NATO Bid

[Purveyor]

Source: Bloomberg

By Patrick Donahue, Arne Delfs and Ilya Arkhipov Nov 26, 2014

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is alarmed by President Petro Poroshenko’s plan to hold a referendum on Ukraine joining NATO, seeing it as a dead end that would only inflame tensions with Russia.

Ukrainian membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is not on the table for Merkel, according to one German official, who said that a referendum wouldn’t bring Ukraine closer to NATO since decisions on membership are made by Alliance countries and not voters. Any bid to join NATO can only end badly, a second official said. Both asked not to be named discussing German government strategy.

--clip
“NATO membership for Ukraine isn’t on the agenda at this point,” Michael Grosse-Broemer, the parliamentary whip for Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc, said in an interview in Berlin yesterday.

German resistance to Ukraine’s membership in the 28-nation military alliance, echoed by France, is a warning to Poroshenko not to aggravate the conflict with pro-Kremlin separatists that has claimed more than 4,300 lives in almost eight months.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-26/merkel-said-to-reject-ukraine-s-nato-bid-over-russian-tensions.html

[cosmicone]

1. NATO should be dissolved. It has served its purpose

and now it is just a waste of money.

[Adrahil]

4. Hey Putin apparently wants it to make a come back!

With all his saber rattling, it's not going away. I would have agreed with you some years ago. Not anymore.

[Fred Sanders]

5. What saber rattling? Against NATO? None. You need to know the term has meaning.

And since Ukraine is not anywhere near being a member of NATO, the wishes of the Kiev coupe regime are not their problem.

[Igel]

2. Silly article.

It's a referendum. Claims have been made that most Ukrainians don't want to be in NATO. At the same time, counter-claims have been made.

Putin, some think, wants to ensure that whatever happens, Ukraine remain neutral and wants to talk to everybody else to make sure that they don't let Ukraine join NATO. Now, ultimately it's up to NATO, but the one player that Putin has consistently insisted on disenfranchising, on treating as some sort of property to be bought and sold is Ukraine and its population.

Putin might be incensed that what he insists is an inanimate objects speaks, but anything that forces him to see Ukraine undehumanized--granted, a virtual impossibility to somebody obsessed with Russian narodnost'--is a good thing.

[Purveyor]

3. Even sillier comment. eom