Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s relatively benign comments in Le Figaro—that Ukraine should forget about joining NATO or the EU, but should secure “an international agreement providing it with extremely strong security assurances to protect it against any risk"—earned him a tongue-lashing from Kiev. Yesterday he weighed in a bit more aggressively.
Speaking to French news station BFMTV, he advised those in Kiev that it was in their best interests to remain “neutral…. Bringing Ukraine into NATO would not promote peace.” There are but two solutions available to Ukraine and the West. The first is the “annihilation” of Russia, but this has the disadvantage of being unrealistic, as “we are not going to wipe out the second nuclear power in the world” and undesirable, as “the world risks falling into total war.”
