NATO Membership for Ukraine Was Always Russia's Red Line - Antiwar.com

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

56% : In Washington, however, there was a kind of geopolitical and ideological inertia at work, with strong interest from Vice President Cheney and large parts of the interagency bureaucracy in a "Membership Action Plan" (MAP) for Ukraine and Georgia.
49% : In March, soon after the United States officially recognized Kosovo's "independence" under continued EU stewardship over Russia's strenuous objection, Burns met with Putin, telling him that the U.S. would push to offer a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Ukraine and Georgia, but that this "should not be seen as threatening."
47% : The spokesman noted that Ukraine's "likely integration into NATO would seriously complicate the many-sided Russian-Ukrainian relations," and that Russia would "have to take appropriate measures."
47% : There could be no doubt that Putin would fight back hard against any steps in the direction of NATO membership for either state.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.