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.

Read more in the article by Sergiy Sydorenko, European Pravda's editor - "Most of NATO is ready to accept Ukraine. But the US is both the engine and the brake."

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

It was 1992.

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."

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

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.

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).

The Kremlin had three main arguments.

Putin told the Europeans that Ukraine did not exist – that it was a territory that had been artificially set apart.

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

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.

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. 

And this is what finally awakened the West on 24 February 2022.

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