NATO is celebrating a milestone anniversary this week. On 4 April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – an association aimed at countering the aggressive expansion of the Soviet Union's influence in Europe through collective defence with US participation – was established in Washington.

75 years later, the Alliance has essentially returned to its original mission and is being forced to confront an aggressive Russia.

Over the past decade, however, the Alliance set itself the naive and – as history has shown – unattainable objective of reconciliation with Moscow. Because of its belief that this was possible, NATO leaders made many mistakes that the Alliance is slowly correcting now. Volodymyr Ohryzko told European Pravda how it all happened, and how Ukraine started to promote the idea of joining the Alliance 30 years ago.

Ohryzko was the Minister of Foreign Affairs when Ukraine applied to NATO for a Membership Action Plan [in 2008] and Putin personally came to the Alliance summit to sabotage it.

Ukraine started moving towards NATO 32 years ago!

It so happened that I was one of the first Ukrainian diplomats to set foot in NATO’s headquarters in Brussels.

It was 1992.

Kyiv had decided that Ukraine should participate in the NATO programme Partnership for Peace. But there was no Ukrainian embassy in Brussels back then, only "embryo embassies" in Berlin and Paris. So the task of ensuring our participation in the programme fell to Ukraine’s ambassador to France and me – the political attaché from the embassy in Germany.

And you know, from the moment I attended my first meetings at NATO headquarters, there was no doubt in my mind that we ought to become part of this space of normalcy, where there is a desire for a civilised world, not a world of confrontation.

There was, however, a narrow circle of diplomats who used to talk about this when Ukraine was a colony of the Soviet empire.

Even back then, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs formed a group of "pro-Westerners", including Borys Tarasiuk (later ambassador to Belgium, the EU and NATO; Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1998-2000 and 2005-2007, and ambassador to the Council of Europe), the late Anton Buteiko (ambassador to the USA and Romania and first deputy minister, who died in 2019) and Viktor Batiuk (permanent representative to the UN and ambassador to Canada, who was killed in a car accident in 1996), and a few others.

So even then there was a group that saw Ukraine as a member of the European Union and a member of NATO.

On unfulfilled expectations

We realised that this would not be an easy path, but we were still dreamers.

I’ll be honest, after Ukraine declared independence, we used to discuss how many years the transformation would take. Back then, we thought: "Well, five years... No, five is probably too fast, but in ten years, by the beginning of the new millennium, Ukraine will have joined both the European Union and NATO."

So these were slightly rose-tinted dreams.

Now I understand why this didn’t work out.

Later, when I worked in Germany and met with top German diplomats, I realised that it was not going to happen that quickly.

When I asked a senior official from the German Foreign Ministry directly whether they saw Ukraine in NATO and the European Union, I got a straight answer: no, we don’t see that – there is no such political decision regarding you. But there is for the Baltic states.

So we were not seen as part of European structures, at least in the medium term.

The only thing that did work out then was the signing of the Charter on a Distinctive Partnership with NATO. And although this document was largely declarative, it was still a very serious step in terms of forming an understanding among our political elite that we should be moving towards the Alliance, that this direction would be decisive for us.

How Putin stopped Ukraine's movement towards NATO in 2008

In 2008, Ukraine asked NATO to provide it with a Membership Action Plan (MAP). Having this status is like being in a "preparatory class" – a course for university entrance.

But even that was too much for Moscow. And when Russia realised that we were seriously aspiring towards this, the entire Russian machine cranked up to prevent it.

But that wasn’t the only reason why we didn’t receive the MAP.

The second reason is much more global, deeper, and stronger: the West continued to see Russia as its partner, turning a blind eye to all the horrors that were already happening in Russia, including the genocide of the Chechen people.

Its European partners forgave Russia everything.

We had the United States on our side.

When President George W. Bush was here in Kyiv ahead of the Bucharest summit [in 2008], he clearly told President Viktor Yushchenko that he would insist on giving Ukraine the MAP.

So we went to Bucharest with total confidence that everything was going to be fine.

But the French and the Germans – Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel – decided that Putin was more important to them. Cheap gas made more sense for Merkel. And Sarkozy did not want to play a separate political role then (unlike, for example, President Macron today).

Thus the Franco-German alliance emerged which blocked the granting of the MAP to Ukraine. And although representatives of many countries sided with us (and later told us in detail about the course of the discussion between Putin and the NATO leaders), the principle of consensus ruled, and the decision was vetoed.

If Germany and France had at least held a neutral position, that decision would have been passed.

How Putin convinced European leaders

The Kremlin had three main arguments.

The first did not play a key role in the making of that decision, but it was strategically important for the future. Putin told the Europeans that Ukraine did not exist – that it was a territory that had been artificially set apart.

In other words, he said the very things that we later heard openly after the invasion of Crimea, the beginning of the full-scale war, and so on. But even back then, he convinced the West that Ukraine was an artificial entity and Ukrainians were part of the Russian people, just seen from the side, because they spoke Russian and thought about the Soviet Union, and because there were communists and the Party of Regions running around with flags, shouting "No to NATO!" and so on.

Unfortunately, the West accepted these arguments to some extent.

But the main role was played by the economic bribery of Western states in the form of cheap Russian gas.

Putin’s second argument was based on an idea that was very popular at the time – the idea of creating "common spaces" in Europe and Eurasia. Projects like Vancouver-Vladivostok or Lisbon-Vladivostok had significant support. The West mistakenly believed they could turn Russia into a civilised partner and did not want to open their eyes to the realities, although Russia did not hide anything. Remember Putin's Munich speech in 2007 (where he denied NATO enlargement, undermined the sovereign decisions of Eastern European states, and warned the West about revising the world order – ed.).

Now it seems that you would have had to be deaf not to hear what was being said – but they didn’t hear it!

How NATO's refusal to give the MAP led to war in Georgia

Putin realised after Bucharest that he could do far more than he himself had expected. He realised that there would be virtually no reactions to his actions.

Russia's aggression against Georgia confirmed this 100%.

Yet NATO did not realise its mistake. I was involved in those events. On the second day after the invasion [of Georgia], we were preparing for a visit to Tbilisi by the leaders of Ukraine, Poland and the three Baltic states.

We were in contact with Western embassies, and I was convinced that even despite the war, NATO and EU member states still had that mindset that "Putin is a partner". 

They essentially blamed [Georgian President] Mikheil Saakashvili for attacking Georgia, meaning that he attacked himself. He had supposedly attacked the Russian "peacekeepers" (who were illegally present in Georgia), thus provoking Russia's response to protect the "Russian-speaking" and Russian citizens residing in the occupied Georgian territories.

And the most frightening thing was that after three months of symbolic sanctions for this invasion, the world returned to normal interaction with Russia. The West decided to turn a blind eye and "not notice" this.

But no matter how deeply you sleep, when something explodes loudly above your head, you wake up. And this is what finally awakened the West on 24 February 2022. Everyone saw that it was a full-scale war capable of turning into World War III.

Yet the West’s actions in Ukraine were ambiguous. We only have to think back to the panicked, shameful evacuation of Western diplomats from Kyiv, when they showed the enemy that they were leaving Ukraine for him on a platter, thinking that Kyiv would fall in three days.

And it was only after seeing how heroically the Ukrainian Armed Forces resisted the Russian enemy that they gradually began to realise their own mistake and the fact that their handling of Russia had been totally inadequate for the past 30 years.

The fundamental change in Germany's position, and its acknowledgment of the mistakes it had made in dealing with Russia, was a clear litmus test.

Ukraine will join NATO

Now I have no doubt that Ukraine will become the 33rd member of NATO.

I sincerely hope that at the Washington Summit, the Alliance will take at least half a step towards this and create some intermediate stage where we will discuss when and how Ukraine will join  NATO.

This would be an important decision for the entire world, and for Putin most of all. Because it would mean that despite his nuclear "threats", NATO is not afraid of him and is ready to deter Russian aggression.

Essentially, what is needed is a decision that the processes of Ukraine's integration into the EU and NATO will run in parallel.

The vast majority of Alliance members are ready for this. But we are aware of the role of the United States, which is the engine of this system and can also act as its brake.

Unfortunately, for now, nuclear "threats" and statements by Medvedev, Lavrov, etc. do make an impression on both the US and Europe. But there is every reason to believe that this will change, whether under the current US administration or the next one.

How Ohryzko demanded Russian-Ukrainian translation in negotiations with Russia

This was before Bucharest.

I never sought conflict with Russia. But I am convinced that relations with all partners, including Russians, should be based on respect, as stated in all diplomatic documents.

Being considered second- or third-class, people thinking you don’t have the right to vote and should stand somewhere behind – I don’t accept that.

Such things do not happen in diplomacy.

Everyone understands that different countries have different political weight, but in international organisations, the US and a tiny island nation in the Pacific alike each have one vote.

Diplomatic ethics and rules of interaction require all countries to respect each other. I demanded that of Russia as well.

As for the details of that story, I'll stop there. I’m planning to write my memoirs, and I’ll put all the details in there.

Interviewed by Sergiy Sydorenko

Video by Volodmyr Oliinyk

European Pravda