Upon further research that you convinced me to do, it seems I did indeed muddle the timeline for the Minsk Accords and get them confused. I shan't make that error again (thanks to you...so, thank you!).

According to a blog post on the France24.com site (source linked below), this is what actually occurred, followed by my response to it:

To understand Russia’s claims of betrayal, it is necessary to review the reassurances then US secretary of state James A. Baker made to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev during a meeting on February 9, 1990. In a discussion on the status of a reunited Germany, the two men agreed that NATO would not extend past the territory of East Germany, a promise repeated by NATO’s secretary general in a speech on May 17 that same year in Brussels.

Russia and the West finally struck an agreement in September that would allow NATO to station its troops beyond the Iron Curtain. However, the deal only concerned a reunified Germany, with further eastward expansion being inconceivable at the time.

"The Soviet Union still existed and the countries of Eastern Europe were still part of the Soviet structures – like the Warsaw Pact – which was not officially dissolved until July 1991," said Amélie Zima, doctor of political science at the Thucydide Centre (Panthéon-Assas) in Paris. "We cannot speak of betrayal, because a chain of events that would rearrange the security configuration in Europe was about to take place."

In short, at a time when Westerners were offering the "guarantees" spoken of by Vladimir Putin, no one could have predicted the collapse of the USSR and the historic upheavals that followed.

"In addition, these promises were made orally and were never recorded in a treaty,” recalled Olivier Kempf, associate researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research. "The turning point of NATO enlargement came much later, in 1995, at the request of the Eastern European countries.

Despite no official piece of paper being signed, I think it was still well known to the USA and Europe that post-Soviet Russia would not take kindly to an expansion of NATO, which was conceived as a relic of the Cold War and which the Russian government at the time likely presumed would be dissolved once the Soviet Union was dissolved. Instead, the USA simply shifted its focus, largely for reasons of profit because member nations are required to purchase large amounts of arms from the American "defense" corporations that have lucrative contracts with the government. The Russian government complained about this continuously, which is understandable considering the original purpose of NATO, considering how it was gradually growing in size, and considering how the USA government reacted when Russia moved weapons close to its doorstep via Cuba decades earlier.

Openly considering a decision to move NATO to the doorstep of Russia, especially with a fanatical nationalist like Putin in charge, was a foolish move whose outcome was easy to predict, and this is why it was done.











• ( https://www.france24.com/en/russia/20220130-did-nato-betray-russia-by-expanding-to-the-east   France24.com article   )