The president of Mexico has condemned NATO’s approach to the war in Ukraine – labelling it “immoral.”
“How easy it is to say, ‘Here, I’ll send you this much money for weapons.’ Couldn’t the war in Ukraine have been avoided? Of course it could,” said President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
López Obrador didn’t elaborate on how, but fair to say a peaceful resolution would have centered on the negotiation of:
Some form of independence for the eastern Ukraine provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk
A Ukraine government pledge that it will not join NATO
Ukraine’s recognition that Crimea is now part of Russia
The increasingly dismal prospects for Ukraine’s military now seem to point to a negotiated end to the war that embraces those same three elements, but perhaps with Donetsk and Luhansk—which together comprise the Donbas region—joining Russia outright.
Though we’re likely to end at the same position—or worse, from a Western view—the Biden White House and NATO member countries were content to first wage a weapon-industry-enriching proxy war that took a terrible human toll on Ukraine, paired with economic warfare that’s causing despair and hunger for people in the United States, Europe and around the world.
U.S.-NATO policy is tantamount to saying, “I’ll supply the weapons, and you supply the dead,” said López Obrador. “It is immoral.”
His comments come as Russian forces continue to strengthen their position in the Donbas, while having already secured a “land bridge” of territory connecting Russia to Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
The remarks were López Obrador’s second display of independence from Washington in recent days. Last week, he refused to attend the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas, in protest of Biden’s exclusion of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Explaining his refusal, López Obrador said, “I believe in the need to change the policy that has been imposed or centuries, the exclusion, the desire to dominate…the lack of respect for the sovereignty of the countries, the independence of every country.”
Mexico voted for a U.N. resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but López Obrador has otherwise proclaimed, “Our posture is neutrality.”
López Obrador is a member of the Morena party. A month after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, six Morena members were among a group of Mexican legislators who launched a “Mexico-Russia Friendship Committee,” which applauded Russian Ambassador Viktor Koronelli when he addressed the group in March.
“For us this is a sign of support, of friendship, of solidarity in these complicated times in which my country is not just facing a special military operation in Ukraine, but a tremendous media war,” Koronelli said. “Russia didn’t start this war, it is finishing it.”