We told you so: NATO rules out policing no-fly zone over war-hit Ukraine
“What is taking place now in Ukraine is horrific. It’s painful and we see human suffering, we see destruction at a scale we haven’t seen in Europe since the Second World War,” he said. But, he added: “We are not going to move into Ukraine, neither on the ground, nor in the Ukrainian airspace.”
Under a collective security guarantee binding NATO’s 30 member countries — Article 5 of its founding treaty — all allies must come to the defense of an ally if it finds itself under attack. Any shooting down of a NATO warplane by Russia could trigger that clause.
“The only way to implement a no-fly zone is to send NATO fighter planes into Ukrainian airspace, and then impose that no-fly zone by shooting down Russian planes,” Stoltenberg said. He said allies believe that “if we did that, we would end up with something that could end in a full-fledged war in Europe.”
Stoltenberg said, “we are not part of this conflict, and we have a responsibility to ensure that it does not escalate and spread beyond Ukraine, because that would be even more devastating and more dangerous.”
DPA Notes: We have already mentioned this before the war broke out in our article here:
NATO PREPARING POPCORNS
All these will happen without NATO doing anything. Any form of military aid, I believe will be coming directly from individual countries like United Kingdom or United States – and even so, it will likely to be limited to supplies and weaponry to try to counter what the Russians will be deploying. I doubt there will be “boots on the ground”.The reality is this: if NATO would not come to the aid of Ukraine today, then NATO will never accept Ukraine into it’s alliance as long as status quo remains (Russia being militarily effective and invasion threatened).
In public, NATO countries’ leaders did not have much of a choice, but to voice their “support” for Ukraine and condemning Russia as the aggressor – but none of them have the political appetite or even political will to either reject the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO outrightly, or to promise the membership to Ukraine.
I suspect, much like the situation in Georgia, NATO countries might actually be glad that they will no longer have to discuss the possibilities of accepting Ukraine into NATO and thus increase the actual chance of war with Russia by that very act.
NATO is a defensive military alliance (or so to speak), and their priorities is to actually prevent war by simply “existing and showing up”. It’s the deterrence factor that makes NATO very effective. As such, countries like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are now totally secured from any Russian military invasion. Russia do not dare go to war with NATO (Russia can’t win such a war).
Excerpt from “Donbas is the final warning from Putin” – http://defensepoliticsasia.com/donbas-is-the-final-warning-from-putin/
and also in this earlier article just before the one above:
Given how NATO’s “lack of” deployment being absolutely lopsided as opposed to the estimated 100,000 Russian troops surround Ukraine, NATO is almost certainly going be bystanders should Russia invade Ukraine. It would be a serious mistake for Ukrainian leadership to assume that the West is going to come to their aid in any meaningful way.
Exerpt from “Russia will not invade Ukraine… unless…” – http://defensepoliticsasia.com/russia-will-not-invade-ukraine-unless/
This is also why, we are consistently critical of Ukraine President Zelenskyy for triggering this war by giving Putin a casus belli to go to war over… People had to die because of the lack of judgement by Zelenskyy and his team.
Western bloc had been waiting for an opportunity to demonise Russia over more, and Putin had been waiting for an opportunity to eliminate the NATO threat of absorbing Ukraine into the alliance. Zelenskyy is being manipulated like a puppet by both sides…
May this war end soon with at little casualties and tragedies as possible.