Russia is pressing NATO to formally guarantee that the alliance will not expand eastward, the Russian Embassy in Belgium said, amid ongoing talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
Moscow also wants to nullify the 2008 Bucharest Summit decision, which declared that Ukraine and Georgia could eventually join the alliance.
“All the oral promises made by NATO in the past about not expanding were conveniently forgotten or ignored when it suited them,” a Russian embassy spokesperson anonymously told Izvestia newspaper, citing assurances given to the Soviet Union during Germany’s reunification.
The diplomat said documentary evidence exists in Western archives but has not been published.
Former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev, however, denied that NATO countries agreed not to expand. “It’s a myth” that the West deceived him into further expansion, he said in a 2014 interview. “The question didn’t even get raised at the time.”
Putin has repeatedly accused the West of “betraying” Russia by breaking promises not to expand NATO eastward.
At the same time, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said last year that Russia has no say over Ukraine joining the alliance.
“Russia has no vote and no veto over who becomes a NATO member,” he said, adding that accession requires unanimous approval from all member states.
Rutte stressed Ukraine must receive strong security guarantees to prevent future attacks, whether or not it joins NATO.
NATO is the only alliance Moscow openly opposes, while welcoming Ukraine’s potential European Union membership. Last year, the Kremlin insisted that Ukraine’s EU membership is its “sovereign right.”
“This is the sovereign right of any country. No one can dictate such decisions, and we are not going to,” Putin’s spokesperson Peskov said.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, Finland and Sweden have joined NATO, nearly doubling Russia’s land and maritime borders with alliance countries to about 3,000 kilometers. The Baltic Sea now effectively serves as an internal “lake” for NATO.