The actions of Norway’s NATO-Jens Chief of Staff, Stian Jenssen, in Arendalsuka this week have drawn enormous attention.

During a roundtable, he suggested that Ukraine could become a member of NATO in exchange for ceding territory to Russia.

This decision provoked strong reactions from several circles, in particular from the Ukrainian government. Wednesday afternoon Jenssen came out in VG to “shape” their remarks.

– My statement on this was part of a larger debate about possible future scenarios in Ukraine, and I shouldn’t have said it that way. It was a mistake, Jenssen told the newspaper.

– Clumsy

However, there is speculation as to whether this decision could have been deliberate, a trial balloon, rather than a failure, as Jenssen stated.

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– If it was a trial balloon, it was a trial balloon that was shot down from all sides, tells the Dagbladet Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the British think tank Center for European Reform.

Bond has 28 years’ experience in the British diplomatic corps and worked for several years on security policy and NATO-related issues.

– What I think Jenssen clumsily proposed was a more permanent solution in which Russia would retain the territories it occupies and the rest of Ukraine would become a member of NATO. That’s problematic, says Bond.

– No promises until the end of the war

– Awful treatment

It highlights the extraordinary brutality that took place in the areas first occupied by Russia and then liberated by the Ukrainians.

– No Ukrainian will leave his own population on occupied lands. The behavior of the Russians in the occupied territories has been horrible, says Bond.

At the same time, he believes that this type of solution is discussed at a higher political level in NATO countries.

– It would surprise me if governments did not consider all types of scenarios internally. But there is a difference between discussing results and actively planning to reach a compromise.

Track: this is Stoltenberg’s plan

– Most important

Retired general and researcher at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), Gordon “Skip” Davis, believes that Jenssen’s actions must be considered in relation to the rest of the context.

– Stian Jenssen’s own comments during and after the panel are, in my opinion, the most important. He stressed that it is Ukraine that will decide which solutions it will or will not accept regarding the preconditions for negotiations on the ongoing conflict, Davis said.

– This is the constant policy of NATO, and it was repeated insistently by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during the week in Arendal.

– Out of context

He further says that he spoke to several people present during the debate and that he feels Jenssen’s statements were taken out of context.

– Having worked with Stian for many years, I know how cautious and eloquent he is, and how well coordinated he is with the Secretary General and the North Atlantic Council.

He underlined that NATO supports Ukraine’s sovereignty, self-defense and right to decide its own future.

– Likewise, NATO continues to condemn Russia’s unjustified aggression, barbaric behavior and illegal annexations. NATO also takes every opportunity to call on Russia to end its unprovoked aggression and immediately withdraw its forces from Ukrainian territory, airspace and territorial waters.

Rather sugar over Ukraine’s bitter pill

See parallels

In the spring of 2005, Vladimir Putin delivered a speech that was to sow fear in several Eastern European countries.

In his address to the people, the Russian President, in his fifth year since succeeding Boris Yeltsin, said the following:

– The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical disaster of our century.

Ian Bond himself had been Britain’s ambassador to Riga since 2005, a year after Latvia joined NATO.

– I delivered my letter of introduction to the President of Latvia the day after this speech, said Bond.

– You can imagine the shock wave it caused in Latvia.

– Miss a lot

Bond believes the West has grossly underestimated the significance and consequences of Putin’s words.

– Apart from the Baltic countries and Poland, the rest of the West rejected it as if it was addressing an audience nostalgic for their country. At the time, I compared him to a German Chancellor making the same statement about the collapse of the Third Reich, he says.

The three Baltic countries, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, were all part of the Soviet Union and joined NATO in 2004.

– Putin also believed at the time that the independence of Ukraine and the Baltic countries was artificial. Latvians also feel that Russia does not accept their independence, he says.

– not crazy

Self Bond believes that Ukraine should be integrated into NATO before the end of the war. He advocated a solution in which Ukraine would be integrated into NATO, while Article Five would apply only to Ukrainian-controlled areas.

– Thus, Article Five would follow the area of ​​land that Ukraine is freeing up, he says.

Ian Bond still believes Putin can be deterred militarily.

– Putin is not crazy. A man who sits 20 yards from his own defense minister and fears he might be infected with the coronavirus probably isn’t very interested in getting roasted in a nuclear apocalypse, Bond says.