If NATO means fewer Ukrainians in graves, why wouldn’t Kyiv pursue membership?

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On June 22, Donald Trump concluded his announcement of the Iran bombings with a grotesque flourish: “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE.” […] Earlier, Vladimir Putin claimed his so-called “Special Military Operation” aimed to “liberate” Ukraine from “Nazis.” The victims, of course, see through the lie. In Bucha, a city where Russian troops committed unspeakable atrocities, one woman told me, her voice laced with bitter irony: “Yes, the Russians liberated me. From my job. My home. My car.”

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It also never escapes me how little ordinary lives matter when nations decide to wage war or when warlords and autocrats struggle for power. Normal people —those who dream, work, and love just as I do—are reduced to abstract casualties, their suffering buried beneath headlines dominated by jingoistic frenzy and geopolitical posturing.

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People become collateral damage, a bureaucratic euphemism for the unimaginable: families erased, homes vaporised, futures stolen—all in service of someone else’s narrow, violent ambitions.

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War cannot be truly understood through a screen. When we read about bombings and occupations—whether in [the Ukrainian city of] Bucha or the [Near East’s] West Bank—we do not meet people. We see letters on a page, images on a screen. These may outrage us, as they should, but they cannot prepare us for the visceral horror of standing before survivors, hearing their voices, feeling the weight of their hands in ours.

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In [Ukrainian city of] Solomianskyi, where the Russians bombed a nine-story building […] authorities admitted they didn’t know if these homes were still livable. If not, more families would join Ukraine’s 3.7 million internally displaced—a number that grows with each strike. War is not just missiles and rubble. It is a boy with a flower for a dead friend, a shopkeeper with no way to feed his children, and a country running out of places to call home.

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No flag, no ideology, no “preemptive strike,” and no excuse whatsoever can justify slaughter—whether it’s Russia butchering Ukrainians to “stop NATO,” or America and Israel flattening Iranian homes to “stop nukes.” Like the British rapper who shut down Piers Morgan, my Ukrainian visit strengthened my loyalty to the people in the camps, under the rubble. To the ones whose names we’ll never know, whose funerals won’t make the news.

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And so it is against this very backdrop that I challenge the Russians’ logic in attacking Ukraine, and why I believe their actions will backfire catastrophically. If Ukraine sees NATO membership as the guarantee that fewer of its people will be buried beneath Russian bombs, what possible reason would it have not to pursue that aim? If achieving this means Ukrainians can tend their gardens without sirens shredding the air; if it means more citizens can rebuild homes without fearing they’ll be obliterated by foreign missiles; if parents can cradle their newborns dreading only time’s passage, not incoming Tomahawks, then how could such military aggression possibly deter their pursuit? Would it not, instead, ignite their resolve?

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For Europe, Ukraine represents the critical bulwark against Russia’s insatiable imperial ambitions, a truth painfully familiar to Central and Eastern European nations that have endured centuries of domination under the Russian Empire, Soviet rule, and now Putin’s revanchist federation.

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Many of [the Ukrainian youth] strongly believe that Russia would never have invaded a nuclear-armed Ukraine.

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Several Ukrainian officials revealed […] that NATO membership currently appears distant, yet they maintain a steadfast commitment to this strategic goal. In parallel, there persists a widespread optimism among Ukrainians about accelerated EU accession, which they see as vital for elevating living standards across their war-torn nation. One Ukrainian official expressed cautious hope about the French-British European defence initiative, explaining what it meant to Ukraine’s war efforts. “If this security framework materialises,” he told me, “it could significantly bolster Ukraine’s defensive capabilities against Russian aggression – potentially serving as a crucial bridge until NATO membership becomes feasible.”

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Ukrainians remind us that self-determination was never inscribed in the [United Nations] Charter as mere poetry. It is a weapon forged to protect the vulnerable from the powerful, the oppressed from their bullies.

This principle either bites or it is meaningless. And the task falls to the world’s oppressed—those bound by shared struggle across colour, creed, and race—to ignite its words with fire until they scorch through the lies of empires.