Garry Kasparov writes:

Last week, an opinion article in Foreign Affairs argued for locking Ukraine out of NATO. The authors, Justin Logan and Joshua Shifrinson of the Cato Institute, offered five claims to support their arguments. But as is typical of the genre, their article is long on opinion and short on facts. Because articles like this are so useful in Kremlin propagandists’ disinformation campaigns, it is worth refuting Logan and Shifrinson’s five claims one by one.

Claim 1: Russia does not threaten NATO. “The idea that Russia could pose a serious threat to Poland, much less to France or Germany, is outlandish.”

This claim is so divorced from reality, so historically illiterate, that it shocks. For more than fifteen years, Vladimir Putin has waged war on NATO, directly and indirectly. When democratic Georgia sought NATO membership of its own free will, Putin invaded. When Ukrainian citizens marched in the pro-European Maidan Revolution (the Revolution of Dignity) in 2014, Putin invaded Ukraine. Putin and his Wagner Group proxies carpet-bombed hospitals in Syria, on the border of another NATO member, Turkey. And they armed coups around the world, with the aim of undermining democracy everywhere.

Russian state agents have murdered British citizens, attempted to conduct a coup in a country that had already signed a NATO accession protocol, kidnapped an Estonian border guard, and are currently holding multiple American hostages. Russian influence operations left fingerprints on the pro-Brexit campaign in the United Kingdom and Yevgeny Prigozhin rose in the Kremlin’s mafia ranks by helping Putin interfere with U.S. elections. And when Putin deemed NATO nations weak—mistakenly, this time—he invaded Ukraine again. Every action Putin has taken, every person Putin’s forces have killed in his bloody-minded fixation on undermining NATO, demonstrates clearly his intentions. If you are still fooled by Putin, I cannot help you. [Continue reading…]