Veteran German politician Oskar Lafontaine has said the West’s refusal to hear Moscow’s concerns is one of the main causes of the conflict in Ukraine. Oskar Lafontaine, who from 1995 until 1999 served as chair the Social Democrats, accused the West of ignoring Russia’s security interests for years.
In an interview with left-wing newspaper Junge Welt published on Saturday, Lafontaine argued that “for a long time, we have been in a situation where Russia and China have been militarily encircled by the US.” The former SPD leader said Moscow had made it clear to NATO for 20 years that Ukraine should not become part of the military alliance – a scenario, which, according to Lafontaine, would mean US missiles deployed on the Ukraine-Russia border.
“These security interests were consistently ignored,” the politician said. And this was “one of the key reasons for the outbreak of the Ukraine war.”
Speaking of Ukraine’s NATO aspirations, the former SPD chair dismissed the argument that every country is free to decide what alliance to join.
“Everyone knows that the US would never accept Cuba’s accession to a military alliance with Russia, nor the deployment of Russian missiles on the US border with Mexico or Canada,” Lafontaine argued.
According to the German politician, Russia’s key concern in Ukraine is not NATO accession per se, but the prospect of missiles appearing on the border with minimal warning time.