In reality, Russia hasn’t engaged in the sort of behaviour they condemn it for, but they have behaved that way themselves.

Before considering NATO’s strange “truth”, let us look at the actual facts. Russia has not “invaded” Ukraine or committed “aggression” against Ukraine. It did not aid or support the overthrow of Ukraine’s constitutional and democratic government or interfere in its domestic affairs as the West did before the February coup. Russia did support the exercise of self-determination of the people of Crimea. It did not use force in doing this, but it did act to prevent force from being used to prevent it. The International Court of Justice has said this is legal; it did so at Western insistence following Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence. Russia has never claimed any part of eastern Ukraine for itself. Russia has not sent its army there. All claims that NATO has made about the presence of the Russian army there are unconvincing or even ridiculous, as a group of retired senior US intelligence officials has pointed out. Russia has always contended and still says that it recognises Ukraine’s sovereignty over eastern Ukraine. There should be no question then of Russia “ripping up rule books” or “changing borders by force”.

In reality, where Ukraine was concerned, Russia did everything it could to prevent violence. It called for the constitutional negotiations the West brokered between Yanukovych and his opponents on February 21, 2014 to be observed. Ukraine would not have lost the Crimea and there would have been no war in eastern Ukraine if these had taken place. Russia always spoke out against the use of force in Ukraine and called for Ukrainians to negotiate in order to settle their differences. Its call went unheeded. Russia sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine in a way the International Court of Justice says is legal. It negotiated ceasefire agreements on April 17, 2014 and July 2, 2014, which Steinmeier and Fabius, the German and French foreign ministers, admitted were broken by the Ukrainian government. Finally it was Russia’s President Putin who proposed the peace plan that seems to have finally produced a ceasefire.

To talk of Russia as the “aggressor” that “attacked” Ukraine as NATO does is to stand reality on its head. It is also strange and hypocritical, coming from an alliance that in recent years has attacked Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, which last year threatened to attack Syria and which used force to alter the borders of Yugoslavia.

However, NATO leaders still insist they are the peacemakers and that Russia threatens them. They call for increases in defence spending to counter this imaginary threat, even though they already account for 57% of the world’s defence spending (Russia accounts for just 5%). They talk grandly of setting up a “rapid deployment force” to “deter” Russia and then show how little actual belief they have in the threat they say Russia poses by assigning just 4,000 men to it. They solemnly tell us that according to Article 5 of the NATO Charter, an attack on one member is an attack on all of them, even though the very fact that they are obliged to say it publicly shows how little they actually believe it. Words of this kind are cheap since as they know Russia has no plan or desire to attack any of them. Yet at the same time they make empty threats and warnings against Russia, they still want Russia’s help regarding Iran’s nuclear program and to counter the far more real threats they face from the Taliban, ISIS and Islamic terrorism in general.