US president calls out the NATO secret

This seems to have been a well-kept secret. Even as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attacked countries like India for buying Russian oil and indirectly supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine, European countries which are members of NATO, which includes the United States, the United Kingdom and Turkey, were continuing to buy oil from Russia in the last three years.

The figures being cited say that the European Union (EU) purchased 45% of its gas from Russia when the war had begun. It has now been reduced to 13 per cent. The expectation would have been given the EU strongly opposing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU would have ended the flow of Russian oil. The most probable defence would be that these contracts were made years before the war had begun, and the contractual obligations are being played out. It is a very lame defence if ever there was one.

And there is little doubt that the euro payments for the Russian oil would have greatly helped Russia to sustain its invasion of Ukraine even as the Chinese and Indian purchases of Russian oil would have helped Moscow. European countries have spent $182 billion on Russian oil and gas since 2022, and an earlier commitment of the EU was to phase out Russian purchases by 2028.

It was left to the American president, Donald Trump, to call out the NATO secret. He said on his social media platform Truth Social that he would sanction Russia once NATO stopped buying oil from the Russians. He said that “the purchase of Russian oil, by some, has been shocking! It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia.” Russian drones have entered Poland, though Moscow claimed that it did not target Poland. Poland is a member of NATO. So, the thin line between Russia and NATO is under threat as war continues to rage in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an interview to the American television news channel, NBC, said, “We have to stop (buying) any kind of energy from Russia, and by the way, anything, any deals with Russia. We can’t have any deals if we want to stop them.”

The situation is getting graver in Europe. The passive support that the NATO in Europe was offering to Ukraine just does not seem to measure up to the Russian challenge. NATO is only too aware that it cannot allow itself be drawn into a war with Russia because that would be a bigger conflagration which will drag the whole of Europe, and even America, into the conflict. NATO in Europe has been steering a cautious course. It has refused to offer membership to Ukraine, even as neutral Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Finland had been made members of the Western military alliance.

Perhaps the war would not have dragged so long if NATO’s European members had immediately ended any trade with Russia once Moscow invaded Ukraine. But NATO members along with the EU had held on to the belief that the West was morally superior to Russia, and they will always enjoy the upper hand.

It appears to have been presumptuous and the European countries’ purchase of Russian oil proves that the moral superiority was indeed weak-kneed. What brings Trump and NATO nearer is the continued intransigence of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is unwilling to make any concessions to Ukraine either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table.

It is true that the fortunes of war fluctuated between the Ukrainians and Russians, but the Russians seem to enjoy the edge. It is this slender advantage that gives Putin the overweening self-confidence to call the shots even when he is losing.