> Regardless of whether you think the Russians were hopelessly naive or full of shit, it is a promise broken. Nope. It's a PR meme created for 2007 Munich Secu

> Regardless of whether you think the Russians were hopelessly naive or full of shit, it is a promise broken. Nope. It's a PR meme created for 2007 Munich Security Conference where Putin made his famous speech and needes justifications for imperialistic ambitions. Stunning economic growth before 2008 crisis allowed him to build up an army, and there he declared his vision. Nobody talked about such assurance before ca 2006-2007, and the 1997 founding act on mutual relations between NATO and Russia excplicitly says that signatories must "respect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security, the inviolability of borders and peoples' right of self-determination as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE documents"[1]. Even if we accept the premise that such assurance was given (which Gorbachev denied), then it was given to the USSR, which does not exist anymore. Former parts of that USSR themselves applied for NATO membership. Should their status be bound forever to a non-existing state? Furthermore, this approach is based on disgusting colonial attitude that Russians are a some kind of master race that has the right to decide over everyone else, while ethnically they made up barely half of the population of the USSR. What about the other half? Do they not have the right to determine their future? Are they forever slaves of the ghost of the USSR? [1] https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_25468.htm