DISINFO: EU is an appendix of NATO
SUMMARY
The EU was initially established as an economic union aimed at improving the lives of its citizens in a socio-economic sense. It has now become an aggressive military-political bloc that is essentially a branch, or rather an appendix of NATO.
RESPONSE
Recurrent pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives, accusing the EU of being subordinate to NATO and serving NATO’s interests.
Pro-Kremlin outlets often portray European states as vassals, puppet states or colonies of the US and NATO.
The EU Member States are sovereign countries and make sovereign decisions about their own security and policies. EU and NATO have different tasks and history and a different set of Member States. The EU and NATO have respectively 27 and 32 member states, of which 23 are members of both.
NATO is a collective defence alliance where decisions are adopted through consultation and consensus, including the deployment of US troops in the territory of member states. Countries decide to join NATO not to be “under US control”, but on a voluntary basis to receive the protection of the alliance, as the cases of Sweden and Finland have shown.
NATO member countries don’t serve US goals but have their own agency, as proven by multiple episodes of disagreements inside the alliance, such as the refusal of Germany, France and other countries to let it take part in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 against US wishes or, more recently, Hungary and Turkey’s obstruction to Sweden and Finland joining the block.
Countries apply, according to their own democratic procedures, to become NATO-members, the organisation does not "expand" or "swallow" countries.
The EU is not at war with Russia. Since Russia launched its unjustified aggression against Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the West has been calling for Russian withdrawal from Ukraine and a peaceful settlement. Some EU member states the US and other G7 nations are providing Ukraine with military and technical assistance to help it repel Russia's aggression and restore its sovereignty over its internationally recognised borders of 1991.
See similar disinformation narratives claiming that EU and NATO is almost the same thing, that NATO is a mechanism of American control over Europe, that NATO is Washington’s territorial expansion mechanism, that NATO became US armed wing ensuring the control of energy resources, that Europe has become a US military and political colony, that Russia should negotiation only with Washington because 90 percent of NATO is the US, that Europe is happy with being cannon fodder for the US.