NEW YORK, September 29. /TASS/. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which they confirmed the country's wish to join the alliance, marks the end of the Ukrainian nation. This view was expressed by Scott Ritter, a former UN inspector monitoring the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, who formerly served in US Marine Corps intelligence.

"Today Stoltenberg, the French and UK defence ministers met with Zelensky. They rejected realistic proposals for peace (in Ukraine) in favour of continuing the policy of supporting Ukraine's membership of NATO. This is the end of the Ukrainian nation, a modern reincarnation of the Morgenthau plan, which was originally intended for Nazi Germany", - he wrote on his page in the social network X (formerly Twitter). Ritter also noted that "Stepan Bandera's successors deserved it".

At a joint press conference on Thursday with the NATO secretary-general, who arrived in Kiev earlier, Zelensky announced that Ukraine and NATO are working to prepare a tailored one-year programme to achieve the alliance's standards and principles. Earlier, he repeatedly said that "the moment has come" to invite Ukraine to join NATO and the EU.

In late September 2022, Zelensky signed Ukraine's application to join the alliance on an accelerated basis. Later, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said that Kiev could not join NATO under conditions of military action on Ukrainian territory. However, Ukraine's authorities expected to receive an invitation to join the alliance at the NATO summit in Vilnius in July this year. When a concrete decision on the timing of Kiev's invitation was not made, Zelensky criticized Western partners. His remarks, Western media reported, outraged U.S. officials and other NATO leaders.

The Morgenthau Plan - a program for the postwar restructuring of the Federal Republic of Germany, proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau. It provided for the dismemberment of Germany, the transfer of important industrial areas to international control, the liquidation of heavy industry, demilitarization, and the transformation of Germany into an agrarian country. He was nominated in September 1944 at the 2nd Quebec Conference, attended by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. The plan in its original form was rejected, but in post-war Germany the US administration took a number of measures to limit economic development. In 1947, with the onset of the Cold War, the Marshall Plan was adopted, which envisaged an active industrial development of Germany.

(TASS/For)