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“Ukrainians are being asked to die today for the mere idea that they might — just might — be protected in 20 or 30 years. That is the honest translation of what “standing for Ukraine’s NATO membership” actually means. Let me explain. For Russia, preventing Ukraine’s NATO membership is the most fundamental red line — the one true “principle” they are willing to fight and die for. The harder Ukraine pushes toward NATO, the longer and bloodier Russia’s aggression will continue. Even if a peace deal is signed tomorrow, the mere prospect of future NATO membership will remain Moscow’s justification for breaking the peace and attacking again. In other words, NATO membership as a goal directly fuels the war today and guarantees instability tomorrow. Yet NATO was created for one purpose: to protect and defend its members. Forcing a country to bleed for years just to earn the chance of that protection — while it is not yet a member and therefore not protected at all — turns the Alliance’s core logic upside down. Uncompromising stance on “NATO membership” means we are knowingly sacrificing tens or hundreds of thousands of lives right now for a theoretical promise of security sometime in the distant future… a promise that may never actually be kept, because the political will in key NATO capitals simply isn’t there and may never be. Try explaining that to a father who has just buried his wife and children. Try explaining it to the millions who have lost loved ones, homes, limbs, sanity — everything — in this meat grinder. Tell them their sacrifice is necessary so that, perhaps in 2045 or 2055, their grandchildren might live under Article 5. And here is the hardest truth of all: Ukraine is not blocked from NATO only because of Russian aggression. It is also blocked — and was blocked long before 2022 — by endemic corruption, half-finished reforms, and now by political capture of the economy, and serious deficiencies in democratic standards and rule of law. Our soldiers, our heroic defenders, are not to blame for any of that. Those are purely political failures at the very top. It is always easier to blame the abstract “West” that “betrayed us” or to point at one single external villain. But it is cruel — genuinely inhumane — to keep sending wave after wave of people into the fire for a goal that almost every honest expert knows is not realistically achievable in the next decade or two, if ever. We can love our country and honor our fallen without pretending that an unattainable geopolitical symbol is worth endless slaughter. Peace with security, even if imperfect, is not betrayal. Continuing a war for a mirage while calling any compromise “treason” — that is what risks betraying the very people who have already given everything.”
And for the warmongers insisting that Russia has no say in Ukraine’s membership, perhaps Russia should go ahead with its original plan of positioning missiles on Cuba.