Comments made by Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky during a CNN interview regarding the potential to join NATO have spawned a theory that President Biden may have wanted to provoke Russia [1] into invading Ukraine.
On March 20th, Zelensky appeared virtually on CNN [2] to discuss the goings on between his country and Russia, highlighting the next steps and aspirations for discussions that can help end the conflict.
But what was of particular interest was when Zelensky mentioned discussions he’d previously had with NATO leadership, where he candidly asked whether his country would ever be accepted. Zelensky said that he was given a firm “no,” [3] but that “publicly” it will appear as though they can join at any time.
“I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no. And the response was very clear, you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open.”
In short, it seems as though Zelensky admitted that NATO was never going to be a thing for Ukraine, at least not any time soon. Still, many believe that Putin’s actions taken against Ukraine were a reaction to him being concerned that Ukraine would join NATO, especially as those reports were heavily circulated in the lead-up to the invasion.
But the op-ed featured in The Conservative Treehouse where this theory of Biden wanting to intentionally provoke Putin also ties in the reports of Biden spending months [4] prior to the Russia/Ukraine conflict trying to get Chinese President Xi Jinping to talk Putin down (unsuccessfully) from doing anything drastic.
Instead, China wound up taking the information from those meetings and informing Moscow that the United States was trying to meddle in their business. The author behind the op-ed thinks the Biden administration knew and hoped China would do this.
“Many people looked at this story from the perspective of incompetence, i.e., why would the Biden team think China would not share the intel, etc.? However, when it comes to these types of issues, never ascribe to incompetence that which can be explained by manipulative intent. There’s every reason to believe what the Biden intelligence community and state department were sharing with China was done with the intention of Beijing giving it to Moscow.”
Furthermore, reports from December of 2021 [5] noted that “Biden assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Kyiv’s bid to join the NATO military alliance was in its own hands.” Yet, Zelensky let the cat out of the bag now that NATO was never an option.
Thus, Biden was seemingly playing into this role of the “doors” being “publicly” open for Ukraine.
As the author of the op-ed coined it, “The Biden administration was purposefully baiting Putin, and provoking Putin to invade Ukraine, because the team around Biden wanted Putin to invade Ukraine.”
When it comes to the theory as to why the short answer per the op-ed’s author is fulfilling the “Build Back Better” overall agenda while benefitting from “a geopolitical crisis to distract the world’s attention.”