THE QUESTION.
Vladimir Putin repeats it almost in each of his interventions against NATO: after the fall of the USSR, the Alliance would have reneged on a promise, that of not advancing its borders towards the East, to those of the Russia.
Thus, on December 23, 2021, less than two months before the invasion of Ukraine, he declared during his annual press conference:
"'Not an inch to the East', they told us in the years 90. So what?
They cheated, they brazenly deceived us!
Five waves of NATO expansion already now
”.
Already, on March 18, 2014, the day of the annexation of Crimea, he exclaimed:
They lied to us on several occasions, they made decisions behind our backs, they presented us with a fait accompli.
This has happened with the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the east, as well as with the deployment of military infrastructure on our borders
”.
Even earlier, during his 2007 speech in Munich, considered the moment of the Russian president's anti-Western turn, the latter wondered as follows: "
We have the right to ask the question: against whom is this expansion directed? ?
And what happened to the assurances given by our Western partners after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?
".
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The Russian president hammers home the story of a broken promise, and he's not alone.
She is also mentioned by several candidates for the 2022 presidential election, such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
But NATO firmly denies the existence of such a promise.
“
It is simply not true, such a promise has never been made, there has never been such a behind-the-scenes agreement
”, recently affirmed its secretary general, the Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg, interviewed by
Spiegel
. .
What about?
And, in particular, what do the officials who were in office at the time of the end of the USSR say?
And what do historians say?
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