https://video.echelon.pl/videos/watch/3024f8b6-dfac-4d75-b1f7-a97df130524c On 18 December 2025, Putin publicly complained once again that the "public promise not to expand NATO" had been broken, his voice literally shaking with insult and disappointment. The only problem is that no such promise was ever made to Russia, especially not in public, and this topic was rarely discussed in Russia before 2014. When asked for details, Russian diplomats usually refer to an obscure 1990 statement by US diplomat James Baker during discussions about the reunification of Germany. This statement is only found in unofficial transcripts of the talks and was never formalised in any international treaties or official documents signed by both parties. Most importantly, Putin also notoriously omits the context: at the time, the Russian president, Boris Yeltsin, assured the US delegation that Russia had absolutely no intention of restoring its Soviet-era influence over the Eastern European countries that emerged after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. This is precisely what Russia began doing in the mid-1990s, following its extremely brutal war in Chechnya, when it started engaging in various forms of political interference and economic blackmail in Eastern Europe. Support for joining NATO peaked in Eastern European countries such as the Baltics and Poland at that time, specifically triggered by the gradual restoration of Russian imperialism. Nevertheless, after several new countries joined NATO, Russia happily signed the NATO–Russia Founding Act in 1997 (again, no mention of "non-expansion"), and cooperated closely with NATO until the 2000s, jointly participating in the KFOR peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. Nevertheless, nobody on the Russian side complained about 'broken promises' regarding 'NATO non-expansion', simply because the absence of such promises was still fresh in the memory. The Baker quote was only dug up and sanctified much later for propaganda purposes. However, the binding promise of Russia's non-expansion, formally codified in numerous UN-registered treaties signed by Russia with its neighbouring countries, was forgotten. Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:19:46 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://video.echelon.pl https://video.echelon.pl/client/assets/images/icons/icon-512x512.png https://video.echelon.pl/videos/watch/3024f8b6-dfac-4d75-b1f7-a97df130524c All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://video.echelon.pl/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.