Kremlin myth busting

For years, the Kremlin has tried to portray NATO’s post-cold war eastward enlargement as a violation of European and American guarantees following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now a Security Policy Working Paper from the Federal Academy for Security Policy helps to dismantle this long-lived myth.

According to Kremlin, NATO has since the end of the Cold War embarked on a deliberate strategy to contain and even weaken Russia; for example, Putin in 2007 rhetorically asked at the Munich Security Conference, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after [sic] the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact”?

The Federal Academy for Security Policy documents that NATO enlargement was never subject to talks with Gorbachev in 1990. Indeed this issue was never raised as Gorbachev was guided by the belief that the Warsaw pact could be reformed and survive. In an October 2014 interview with Russian daily Kommersant Gorbachev noted: “the topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was never discussed; it was not raised in those years [1989-1990]. I am saying this with a full sense of responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country brought up this issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact had ceased to exist in 1991. Western heads of state of government, too, did not raise it”.

Dear Kremlin – I suggest we bust this myth and move forward. 

Read the full report: here:https://www.baks.bund.de/sites/baks010/files/working_paper_2018_03.pdf