Elon Musk shared a video to show how NATO expansion angered Vladimir Putin
On Tuesday, tech billionaire Elon Musk posted a video in which American economist Jeffrey D. Sachs described how the conflict in Ukraine was sparked by the US-led NATO expansion rather than Russian aggression.
In the video posted on X, the American economist made the case that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strike was prompted by the US’s plan to extend NATO to Ukraine.
In the video, Sachs states, “This is not an attack by Vladimir Putin on Ukraine, as we are told today.” It was unable to confirm the video’s precise time and date.
The Joe Biden administration has come under fire from Jeffrey D. Sachs for making the false assertion that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked.”
Sachs stated in a 2023 piece for Common Dreams, “The Biden team uses the word ‘unprovoked’ incessantly, most recently in Biden’s major speech on the first-year anniversary of the war.”
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1856172877688570095
“NATO will not advance an inch to the east”
Sachs remembered in the film NATO’s pledge to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that the alliance would not “move one inch eastward if you agree to German unification.”
“The United States broke its promise”
According to Sachs, issues arose when the US began to renege on that pledge.
Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999, marking the formal start of the alliance’s expansion. In the video, Sachs said that Russia at the time disapproved of the US-led 1999 bombing of Serbia, which included NATO bombing Belgrade for 78 days in a row.
“Putin once thought about joining NATO”
Additionally, according to Sachs, Vladimir Putin was once “pro-European” and even contemplated joining NATO in order to establish a “mutually respectful relationship.”
He said that the US’s unilateral withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 made matters worse.
The United States unilaterally left the anti-ballistic missile accord in 2002. Russia sees the US placing missile systems in Eastern Europe as a grave danger to its national security, which is what it did, he added.
Sachs said that despite Putin’s repeated warnings against US-led NATO expansion, America actively contributed to the 2014 government change in Ukraine, escalating tensions.
