 Ukraine has been trying desperately to join NATO for years, but does a recent statement by Joe Biden delay or even dash these hopes? The World Health Organization's Regional Director for Europe thinks refugees can help bridge the shortage of doctors in the region. It sounds like a noble thought, but is it really so? Argentines in the province of Hohoi are opposing the constitutional reform that was pushed through and are being attacked by security forces. What is the reason for the protests? We will be finding the answers to all these questions in today's episode of Daily Debrief. Should Ukraine join NATO? This question was arguably one of the reasons the disastrous war began in the first place. For years, Western countries kept promising Ukraine NATO membership and politicians in that country kept advocating it as a solution to all problems. This was despite Russian warnings that it would be a giant provocation. After the war began last year, President Vladimir Zelensky and his allies in the West kept talking about it as the need of the hour. But now, President Joe Biden says that the United States won't make it easy for Ukraine to join NATO. Is this a blow to Ukraine's NATO dreams or is it just one in a seesaw of statements from desperate officials in the West? We have news clicks Pravee Purgasso joining us in the studio. Pravee, what Joe Biden has said, is it a turnaround from what others were saying and if so, why? Well, you know, this is a very complicated question because what has the United States said in the past about Ukraine joining NATO? Right. That's really something that we don't know. They have been speaking in many voices. What they have been saying continuously is that they would support Ukraine to the hilt, whatever it takes. This is the statement. So, formally, whether they become a part of NATO or not, what does the difference? If the probably are a part of NATO right now, then the NATO is supposed to come to their defense if it is attacked and it's already under attack. Therefore, does NATO formally enter the war? Now, as of now, they are not formally in the war. They are supporting Ukraine, what it takes, whatever it takes, giving them arms, giving them, as you know, intelligence support. And in this case, it's really the satellite to other radio intelligence, including targeting of Russian arms, ammunition and so on. So, given all of that, they are in the war, but not formally in the war. But if Ukraine is a part of NATO, then the self-defense provisions of the treaty, which is basically what NATO is, would then operate. Which means every country has to support each other in the war. So, that is the issue, that this war doesn't seem to be it's going away. And if it continues indefinitely or it's frozen as a conflict, then such in a frozen conflict, can a country join NATO again becomes a question. Because officially, there is no peace agreement, then it's still a frozen conflict. Like for instance, what we discussed earlier also, South Korea and North Korea, where there is a cease-fire agreement, but there is no peace agreement, not a basically an agreement that we have come to a common understanding that's not there. So that is the technical part of it. Other part of it is that there are various NATO partners and particularly those in Eastern Europe, in fact, the smaller the size, the more the barking, so to say, I guess it's common to the canine world as well, that they have very small countries arguing that they should immediately, NATO should declare itself a party to the war and it should start fighting on the side of Ukraine, should send its troops. And of course, they've already sent weapons and aircraft, but all of that, but also sent troops. Now, that is a line which US doesn't want to cross. Because if it does, then you really have nuclear-powered countries, those who have nuclear arms going to war against each other. And then of course, where does it stop? Does it stop at Britain? Does it stop at France? If France is a party to attack on Russia and Ukraine already is attacking inside Russia, if NATO becomes a party to that, well, then it's a NATO attack on Russia, then what Russia's response going to be? So this is why ultimately, I think Joe Biden has decided that's a line he's not going to cross, because that is bringing a nuclear holocaust much closer. And I think that's why he has said, okay, right now there is no immediate prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. So that is, I think, the crux of it and let's not forget, this whole issue of joining NATO came about in 2008, when both Georgia and Ukraine was promised to become NATO partners, NATO members. And this was at that time itself, people had said this is a disaster, because this will automatically bring it into coalition with Russia. And that's what happened immediately in Georgia. And post-2014, this has been a war in the making, because it's very clear that the Minsk Accords, the Minsk 1, 2 Accords, will essentially cover up for army Ukraine for exactly what has been happening now. And therefore, in that sense, I do think that this is not something new, but this is reiterating the status quo that NATO will do everything in its power to help Ukraine, but formally not enter the war. Now, this does prove correct. All those people who said this would happen, including yourself. You've been saying on this show in the past that this membership is not going to work out. All it serves to do is get Ukraine to fight to the last man. Well, Ukraine is willing to fight to the last man, if they get arms, if they get weapons, and if they get the money. The question is, does it have the infrastructure to continue this war indefinitely? And B, are the people willing to fight like this for how long? And here again, they're at the moment in conscription mode. They're conscripting people of what age, even up to 40, 50, they're conscripting people of that age to go to war. Let's face it, any war does rouse nationalist emotions. And there's no question that Ukraine has, perhaps for the first time, minus Donbas region, it has identified itself now as different from Russia. Because otherwise, sure, let's not forget, Russian language speakers were number one in Ukraine. In fact, that's the largest, it was the most common language spoken, including Ukrainian leaders who proclaimed themselves as not Russian. That was the first language. That was not the ethnicity that they proclaimed, but that was the first language. Now, ethnicity, again, it's a complex question. What is ethnicity after all? So there have been a lot of this kind of issues. But let's face it, the fracture lines are now clear. Russian Orthodox Church, Russian language speakers, Russian ethnicity. All these three are sought to be now distanced. And even those who are fluent or they really know that their first language is Russian, even they are now going to say, no, my first language is something else. So this is the reason why they still are willing to fight for Ukraine. And as I said, any war rouses nationalist identities. And yes, Ukraine has found an identity which is not Russian through this war. This is the reason that Putin, I don't think, wanted this war. He wanted through the Minsk Agreement to have Donbas as a part of Ukraine, but agree that Ukraine accepts Russian ethnicity and Russian language. Like many other European countries, like Switzerland, Belgium, they have multiple ethnicities, multiple languages, including Italy, for instance. So I think those things are the ones which was a possible as a model after this no longer. So I think that's what the question is, how long the nationalism can propel people to join the Ukrainian army and can they sustain this war? And how long can they sustain this war? Yes, you're right, as you've quoted me, that the United States and its NATO allies are willing to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. But that is something which is at the end of the day, that is something that they'll have to think about, how long, just as NATO countries will have to think, how long can they afford to put their money and their weapons in this bottomless pit, particularly when they themselves are running out of industrial capacity to manufacture or match Russia in terms of this kind of a land war which they've got into. Thanks very much for joining us. Hans Klub, the WHO Regional Director for Europe, has written an article in Al Jazeera with the title, Refugees Can Fix Europe's Doctor Crisis, Poland's Showing How. The article describes how health workers among Ukrainian refugees have been drafted into Poland's health workforce. Klub describes this as a model to address the shortage of health professionals in Europe. Now, on the face of it, this sounds like a win-win for everyone concerned. European countries get medical professionals and refugees are able to sustain themselves and also help their fellow refugees. However, it's not simple and to explain why we have with us Anna Vrakkar of the People's Health Movement. Anna, thanks for joining us. Anna, what Hans Klub has said, is it really as simple a solution to just drop refugees into the health care system? Is it so easy to solve this kind of a problem? Well, you know, the short answer is of course not because I think that what we have to do here is actually consider the opinion piece that Klub wrote in the context of a conversation, which is kind of picking up in Europe right now. And it's essentially European governments and the European health policy officials being a bit more open towards what they were already doing in practice. So, you know, for essentially for decades, we have seen in Europe that there is essentially no health workforce policy. So if you talked about planning health systems and strengthening health systems, the health workforce would always come up last. So it was a very tech-oriented and budget-oriented discussion that we saw. And now, you know, what happened was that Europe has an aging health workforce, which at the very beginning is not enough inadequate numbers to address all the health needs that Europe has. And so what they're doing now is essentially saying what they were doing for years, and that the health workers will be drafted from the global south. So it's not, you know, in the article that you mentioned, it's about refugees. And mainly, I point out, Ukrainian refugees who are being integrated in the Polish health system. But it's also a much wider initiative that they have, which is interrelated with the activities of recruiting agencies in the global south, specifically, and I think one of the parts of the world that we want to mention here is definitely Africa, because many African countries are facing severe shortages, which are made worse by the activities by international recruiting agencies and the drafting that there is in the global north. So again, to come back to the article, what we are reading here is that it's essentially an attempt to have an easy fix for something that has been growing over the years. And in a way, which is quite so, I'm trying not to be too angry here, but I think that it's actually a very, very problematic what we are hearing from European officials right now, because it's completely ignoring all the responsibilities that European countries have towards global south, towards other countries that are dealing with much more severe shortages because of what Europe has imposed on those countries to do. These include financial loans, these include conditionalities that they had to honour, these include austerity measures that were actually pushed forward by the global north people who are now surprised that their own health systems do not have adequate numbers of health workers. So a caveat of course here is that the WHO is in a particular position. I wouldn't want to, you know, this to be a very anti WHO intervention, but what needs to be said is that the WHO Europe, while it does have a responsibility for strengthening the health workforce and health systems in Europe, it also should not forget that this strengthening must not come at the price of health in other parts of the world. And right now what we're seeing is that apparently they've kind of lost track of that responsibility. So I hope that in the near future we're going to read something quite different from WHO Europe. Right Anna, you mentioned Africa, now you have tracked the health systems in Africa, you've seen the problems there and then also the problems of people who actually go to other countries from poorer countries from Africa to work there in join the health workforce. What are their experiences really like? Well, you know, so in the people's health dispatch, I think that mostly what we have written about is the experience of UK recruitment practices towards the English-speaking countries of Africa. And this is something that has come up quite recently because the WHO, of course, they published a list including countries which are at very, very severe risk of suffering the consequences of health workers shortages. And then the UK announced, but okay, so we'll stop recruiting from those countries. But what we see is that, you know, the UK tends to make announcements like that, but the flow doesn't stop. So it's not only about them saying, oh, you're on the red list, we're not going to actively recruit. It has a lot to do with what the working conditions are at home. So if in Ghana, for example, we have horrible working conditions in the health system, the health workers are essentially pushed to migrate to other countries. So it's not only about, you know, European countries and the other global North countries saying, oh, but wash their face and say, oh, wash their hands and say, but okay, we won't take an extra approach to that. But at the same time, not do anything to actually make things better. And at the same time, of course, to think about policies that would allow them to train their own health workforce. So these are countries that have the money to actually do that. They can train, they can recruit, they can make sure that public health systems have normal working conditions where people want to stay, unlike the UK today. So, you know, that's one of the problems. The other problem is, of course, racism, which has to be talked about because it's not like people from other regions come to Europe and then they're just seamlessly integrated in the health systems and they have a great time. It has a lot to do with language. It has a lot to do with the color of your skin. So people who have come not only to the UK, but for example, to Germany, they have reported that they felt awful when they came to work there, not only because they were discriminated against in the way that they were not given a position that fits what they were trained for. The migrant health workers are usually employed at lower staff levels. But also, you know, by the way that they are treated, by the way that they are expected to act inside the health system, it's a very problematic issue. And this is something that has to be addressed by the WHO, I would say other regional and global level, and also by the local governments. Thanks a lot for that update. And we'll definitely be following the story to see what comes next from the WHO. In Argentina's Hohoi Prevents, people have taken to the streets against the constitutional reform proposed by the government of Gerardo Morales. Security forces attacked protesters and dozens were injured by tear gas, rubber bullets and batons. A young protester lost an eye after being shot in the eye with a rubber bullet. To understand why the protesters are on the streets and what the proposed constitutional reform is, we have Zoe Alexandra of People's Dispatch joining us. Zoe, scenes of repression in Hohoi, could you elaborate on why people are taking to the streets? Well, as you said, for the past several days in the Argentine province of Hohoi, diverse indigenous communities, trade unions and social organizations have been on the streets, mobilizing against the reforms, the provincial constitution that were brought forward by the conservative governor Gerardo Morales. And these reforms have really sparked very, very strong opposition across many social sectors, precisely because they undermine the rights of the people. And so, for example, indigenous organizations are very concerned about this reform and what it does with regards to access to land. Hohoi, to give some context, Hohoi is a province that has some of the largest lithium deposits. And the indigenous communities in the province have been engaged in several different conflicts with the multinational corporations that have been trying to develop projects there. And essentially this constitutional reform says that anyone who has a property title is entitled to make use of the land as it wants in favor of who owns the property and that those who try to alter this property relationship, essentially they don't have the right to do this. And it also paves the way for evictions of people who don't hold the property titles. And so why is this important in Hohoi? As I said, there's many different conflicts over lithium mining in the province and 90% of indigenous communities in Hohoi do not have land titles. Despite being the ancestral inhabitants of this land, of course, the process of genocide through colonization of Argentina where many indigenous communities were pushed back, where their lands were stolen from them, many of these communities remain on the land only through a process of intense, intense struggle against private corporations, against private landowners, et cetera. And so essentially they see this constitutional reform as a threat to their permanence in this land and really an empowerment of these private landowners to essentially get rid of them, gives them more impetus, more legal grounds to kick them off the land. So this is one thing that has really, really concerned people and given more momentum behind this movement against these multinational projects, extractive industry projects that have been popping up in Hohoi. Another very concerning reform that people have been pointing to is the prohibition of street blockades and highway blockades. In Argentina, this is one of the most common forms of protests for the past several decades. This has been the main way that people take their demands to the street. And this constitutional reform essentially bans it. And it says that anyone who disturbs a peace is going against the law. This has been, again, widely rejected by indigenous organizations, by human rights organizations, both in Argentina and internationally, as it undermines people's right to protest and their full guarantee of human rights. There have been many different papers that have come out from organizations in the country saying that this is a direct violation to actually the national constitution in Argentina. So for many, all of these factors and more, this has really brought people out onto the streets. And finally, of course, in addition to the fact that these reforms undermine their rights, people are also incredibly angry over the fact that these constitutional reforms were essentially presented one day. And just over a week later, they were being approved by the Constitutional Convention in the province. This is a process that has a time-lop in about 90 days. And so people had been gearing up to stage mobilizations, thinking that there would be a process of dialogue. But the governor essentially fast-tracked these reforms, clearly sensing that there would be very strong opposition on the streets in Congress and just was able to push these forward in sort of an advanced and express way. And that has really angered people as well because it did not respect the established times that these usually take place. In many cases, when there are reforms to the Constitution or there's a rewriting of the Constitution, this involves a consultation process with the people of the land. And so for all these reasons, this has really angered people. And how has the government of Geraldo Morales responded to these widespread protests? So after these very, very unpopular reforms were approved late on Thursday night, early Thursday morning, essentially hours later, road blockades popped up, protests continued because they had already started. Once the reforms were announced, they continued. And there was sort of a massive increase in popular mobilization. There have been dozens of highway blockades that have been erected across the province. And the response to these protests has been very, very heavy repression on Saturday in Purma, Marca. The police heavily repressed the road blockade of Highway 9. Some 30 people were detained. Dozens were injured. A 117-year-old boy lost his eye today, just today in the capital of Jujuy in San Salvador de Jujuy. There was further repression. People were mobilizing outside the legislature. And there's extremely tough images to see, very, very graphic images of people being beaten, hit in the head, bleeding. Very, very, very concerning. And of course, this has been met with a very strong response from the national government. We have to remember that Jujuy, the province, is being governed by the radical civil union under Gerardo Morales. The national government by Frente de Todos, the Progressive Coalition. And the government has repeatedly called on Gerardo Morales to stop the repression of the people, to try to engage in dialogue, to try to actually create the space for people to be able to raise their demands, raise their grievances, and above all, really, for this violence against protesters to stop. Gerardo Morales, in response to these protests, in response to calls from the national government to stop repression, has on one hand said that he will not go back on the reforms. On the other hand, he's now started to blame the national government for the protests, saying that Christina Fernandez, Alberto Fernandez, are financing these protests, that they're instigating violence, and that they're trying to subvert the order in Jujuy. So we're getting into a situation where there's increased tensions, increased violence against the people. However, national government has been speaking out against these human rights violations. And in the city of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, there have been very large protests of different social movements, left political parties, trade unions, who are calling for an end to repression. Different human rights organizations have called on Gerardo Morales as well to suspend the reforms, to stop the repression. And so this is becoming from a provincial local conflict, to now a national issue that is definitely going to continue over the next coming days. Right, Zoe, thanks very much for joining us. And that's all we have for today. Thanks very much for watching Daily Debrief. We will see you again on Thursday. Until then, you can find more of our work on our website peoplesdispatch.org. Our social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and our YouTube channel have more updates and this show Daily Debrief. Thanks again for watching.