Given that NATO's demands are not compatible with Russia's, I suppose people need to decide which side's demands are more reasonable.
Not that 2 wrongs make a right
Fortunately that was resolved amicably without the US invading Cuba. (Ironically, the Bay of Pigs Invasion occurred the year before the Cuban Missile Crisis).
[...]
"After several days of tense negotiations, an agreement was reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba and return them to the Soviet Union, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement to not invade Cuba again. Secretly, the United States agreed that it would dismantle all of the Jupiter MRBMs, which had been deployed in Turkey against the Soviet Union."
Why only dictatorships?
No, but the ones oppressed by Russia tend to be.
> And Greeces and Italy are a classic examples of nations making it big under EU cover.
GDP (US$ PPP) per capita (IMF 2021 estimate):
Italy 43,376
Greece 30,495
Belarus 20,578
Moldova 13,879
37 Montenegro 21,390
36 Belarus 21,470
35 Bulgaria 25,850
34 Russia 30,430
33 Croatia 31,110
32 Greece 31,820
Which of the countries in your list do you think are in the global north, and which are in the global south?
Also, afaik, the demand was not about joining EU, but NATO?
Austria, Finland, Sweden are not part of NATO, and are doing fine.
Plenty of very poor subservient countries in the EU too, just look at how “nicely” they dealt with Greece. Romania and Bulgaria are also roughly as poor as Ukraine, on the PPP basis.
EU comes with some huge strings attached, up to and including loss of sovereignty.
https://www.opindia.com/2022/03/european-union-hits-poland-a...
Ukraine could've just had both sides (NATO and EAEU/Russia) pay for the Ukrainian defence/security, then figure out a side deal with EU, and be part of their economic area and customs union, but not cede sovereignty to EU.
They could've done it. The real question is why that didn't happen, why did they want to cede sovereignty to the EU so bad?
Signing a treaty (which you can later leave) is not a loss of sovereignty, it is an exercise of sovereignty. If you want to be reductionist about it, a country joining NATO would be a loss of sovereignty too, because they would be committing their foreign and military policy to a supranational body.
Similarly, your proposal of Ukraine promising not to join NATO (presumably as a condition in some treaty?) would also be a loss of sovereignty, by that logic, because a truly sovereign nation is entitled to apply for NATO membership whenever it wants to.
EU law primacy is a marked departure away from the standard, in which a ratified treaty must be implemented into national law in other to codify that international obligation into the domestic legal system.
I never understood why would one want to be in the EU, if you can simply be part of the EFTA/EEA and the Schengen area?
"In R v Secretary of State for Transport, ex p Factortame Ltd, the House of Lords ruled that courts in the United Kingdom had the power to "disapply" acts of parliament if they conflicted with EU law. Lord Bridge held that Parliament had voluntarily accepted this limitation of its sovereignty and was fully aware that even if the limitation of sovereignty was not inherent in the Treaty of Rome, it had been well established by jurisprudence before Parliament passed the European Communities Act 1972." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law#...
Lord Bridge held that Parliament had voluntarily accepted this limitation of its sovereignty
Lord Bridge was a British judge, who served as Lord of Appeal in Ordinary between 1980 and 1992. A leading appellate judge, Bridge is also remembered for having presided over the Birmingham Six trial.
Qualified legal experts accept that EU law is a limitation of sovereignty.
What are your legal credentials and experience with the law?
What happens after the missiles are intercepted?
Russia still hasn’t reached Kyiv - 5 hours from the Russian border, how far can they project power beyond their borders ?