Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the man who thought Nato would come

A scrutiny of actions and statements before and after the invasion shows Zelenskyy’s overconfidence that Nato would fight on Ukraine’s behalf, while the military alliance never wanted to take on Russia.

When Russia’s President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, he wanted his neighbouring country’s “de-Nazification, de-militarisation and its neutrality” with regard to his strategic tussle with the West.

The invasion followed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s refusal to give up the demand for his country to be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), and acknowledge bordering Donbas’s Luhansk and Donetsk regions as independent states.

Zelenskyy no longer wants to be part of the US-dominated military alliance whose expansion in eastern Europe had rattled Putin. Zelenskyy is also willing to be neutral, and discuss the future of Luhansk and Donetsk (read their embracing of the Russian Federation).

But the concessions have come only after huge costs: cities wrecked, thousands dead, and millions displaced.

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The idea is not to lay the blame, in any way, at the door of a country that’s the victim of the worst military aggression in Europe since World War II. However, a scrutiny of actions and statements leading up to the invasion, and those even in the middle of war, shows two things:

Let’s first go back to 2008 when then US President George W Bush pushed for putting Ukraine on Membership Action Plan (MAP), an essential step towards becoming a Nato member.