Expert: Russia Must Accept Reality Of NATO's 32 Member Countries

(MENAFN- UkrinForm) Jim Stokes, a senior expert with GLOBSEC's“Future of Security” program and former director of nuclear policy at NATO (2023–2025), said this in an interview with Ukrinform.

“Russia will therefore have to accept the reality: NATO now has 32 members. Russia can continue talking about this, and NATO can simply respond:“Noted. We are not going to change,” Stokes said in response to a question about whether the Alliance would be willing to agree to the Kremlin's demands to roll back its military presence to pre-1997 levels.

According to the expert, this seems“absolutely impossible.” He was referring to the new members-Finland and Sweden-not to mention the 16 countries that joined after the end of the Cold War.

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“They are not going to agree to leave the Alliance, and the other Allies are not going to agree simply to let them go. That has never happened in NATO's 77-year history,” Stokes noted.

However, he acknowledged that another question is whether NATO will ever allow new allies to join. Such a decision is made by consensus among all 32 countries, Stokes reminded.

At the same time, the expert emphasized that the main problem right now is that this Russian war is shaping the perception of the threat, and it is precisely because of this war that Finland and Sweden decided to join the Alliance rather than remain mere partners.

“Much of the responsibility therefore lies with Russia. It can blame NATO for expanding closer to Russian borders, and I understand that it is unhappy about it. But Russia had no problem with this in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It turned the issue into a political one, and now it will have to come to terms with it,” Stokes concluded.

As reported, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Ukraine expects a trilateral format of negotiations involving Ukrainian, American, and Russian representatives in November, and that Europe must be involved in the diplomatic process and participate in decisions regarding the end of the war.

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