by Eric Zuesse, The Duran:

Before Ukraine’s President Volodmyr Zelensky quit negotiations with Russia to settle the war in Ukraine, he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on 20 March 2022, “I made a point that the war in Ukraine has been lasting for eight years. It’s not just some special military operation.” Zakaria had asked him “You have said recently that Ukraine perhaps will not be a member of NATO. You have admitted that. Could that — there are people who ask, could that concession, had you made it clearly and loudly earlier, could that have prevented this war?” Zelensky’s reply said that for Ukraine to make such a “concession” — unless some NATO countries would step up to provide “guarantees” to Ukraine’s winning this eight-year war — would be unacceptable to Ukrainians, because this war had started “eight years” earlier, and they wouldn’t accept now — after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 — a “concession” of an indispensable part of what their military has been fighting for ever since long before that, going all the way back to 2014 — virtual if not official membership in NATO, so that American missiles can then become posted on Ukraine’s border only 300 miles away from Russia’s command center in The Kremlin.