Russia invaded Ukraine on Thursday after months of tension after deploying more than 100,000 troops on the country’s border. Since November, Moscow has threatened to take “military action” if NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), a Western military alliance, does not commit to vetoing Ukraine’s accession to the bloc — which it did not.
Understand what NATO is, what the group’s objective is and why it is central to explaining the conflict in Eastern Europe.
what is nato
Acronym for North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it is a military alliance commanded by the powers of the West. It was created in 1949, during the Cold War, initially with 12 countries, as a military front against the Soviet Union — which launched its own communist version, the Warsaw Pact, six years later. With the end of the communist bloc in 1991, the alliance acted in conflicts such as the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
The main advantage of being part of the alliance is in article 5 of the treaty, the principle of collective defense, which guarantees military protection to any country in the bloc — in practice, countries with less organized infrastructure can receive protection from military powers such as the United States. .
who are the members
The alliance has expanded over the years and now has 30 members.
What is the relationship with Ukraine?
Although it is considered an “ally”, Ukraine is not part of NATO, and it was precisely against the country’s accession to the military alliance that Russia started the war. After flirting with the bloc in the post-Cold War period, with military support in the former Yugoslavia in 1996, for example, Moscow was moving away and began to consider the NATO presence in Eastern Europe one of the main threats to the country.
The unease increased especially after 2004, when the former Soviet republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined the alliance. That’s because the Russians claim that the United States had agreed in 1990 that the bloc would not reach the former Soviet Union, even though a formal pact with that clause was never signed.
During the 2000s, former US President George W. Bush tried to include Ukraine in the bloc, but was objected to by France and Germany, much more dependent on Russia, fearing a military scale.
In 2008, the NATO meeting in Bucharest ended with a promise that Ukraine and Georgia, another former Soviet republic, would join the bloc at some point. It was one of the reasons why, months later, Russia invaded Georgia and managed to block the country’s accession to the group, in a context very similar to the current war.
Russia is now trying a similar move. First, in November last year, it deployed 100,000 troops on the border with Ukraine. Amid fears of invasion, Moscow has indicated it would back down if NATO pledged never to accept Ukraine’s membership of the bloc. The demand was not accepted and now, after months of tension, Russia has launched a military invasion of the neighboring country.
Chronology
1949 – NATO’s 12 founding countries sign the North Atlantic Treaty in Washington
1952 – Turkey and Greece join
1955 – West Germany joins NATO after years of denazification
1956 – First internal crisis, with US opposing Franco-British intervention in the Suez crisis
1961 – The Cold War raises the bar with the construction of the Berlin Wall
1966 – France leaves NATO command structure, accusing American excess power
1982 – Spain joins NATO
1989 – Berlin Wall Falls, Beginning of the End of Soviet Communism
nineteen ninety – German reunification, East Germany leaves the Warsaw Pact
1991 – End of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact
1994 – First NATO military action: downing of four Serb planes in Bosnia
1994 – War in Chechnya exposes Russian military weakness; Moscow joins partnership program
1996 – Russians support NATO troops in former Yugoslavia
1999 – NATO attacks Yugoslavia, beginning of Russian withdrawal; Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic join
2001 – In response to 9/11, article 5 of NATO, of mutual defense in the event of aggression, is invoked for the first time
2003 – Another rift: countries led by Germany veto NATO in the Iraq War
2004 – Expansion to the east, with seven ex-communist countries, including the Baltic States, bringing the number of members to 26
2008 – To veto NATO membership, Russia wages war with Georgia
2009 – France returns to NATO’s military command; Albania and Croatia join
2011 – With UN mandate, NATO controls Libyan airspace
2014 – Russia annexes Crimea and intervenes in eastern Ukraine to prevent Kiev from joining the West
2017 – Montenegro joins NATO
2018 – U.S. split between Trump and NATO widens as American demands for more spending
2020 – North Macedonia joins NATO
2021 – Russia deploys troops on Ukrainian border, threatens to take military action if NATO does not veto Kiev’s participation
2022 – NATO rejects Russian requests, Moscow attacks Ukraine
