Turkey Says Some NATO Members Want Prolonged Ukraine War In Order To Weaken Russia

Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

In an interview on Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said some NATO member states want the war in Ukraine to last longer as a way to hurt Russia.

“There are countries within NATO who want the war to continue,” Cavusoglu told CNN Turk. “They want Russia to become weaker.”

According to Iran’s Mehr News Agency, Cavusoglu did not think the war would last long after Russia and Ukraine held peace talks in Istanbul last month. But following a NATO foreign ministers meeting, he was given the impression that some alliance members don’t want the war to end.

Since Russia invaded on February 24, the US and many of its NATO allies have abandoned diplomacy with Russia. Instead of seeking a diplomatic solution, the Western powers are pouring weapons into Ukraine and waging an economic sanctions campaign against Russia.

The view among some NATO members on the war was summarized by a recent report from The Washington Post…

The report said: “For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe.”

Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes: “Everything that’s being shipped into Ukraine today, of course, is coming out of stockpiles, either at DoD or from our NATO allies, and that’s all great news. Eventually we’ll have to replenish it and we will see a benefit to the business…”

— Charles (@cdithaca) April 19, 2022

The WaPo report also spelled out: “Ukraine’s Western backers have vowed to respect Kyiv’s decisions in any settlement to end the war with Russia, but with larger issues of global security at stake, there are limits to how many compromises some in NATO will support to win the peace.”

As AFP reviews of recent talks which yielded no progress: “Turkey has twice hosted direct negotiations between the two sides, on March 10 between the Ukrainian and Russian foreign ministers in the southern city of Antalya and on March 29 between the two sides’ negotiators in Istanbul.”