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Quote from: Jamala on April 09, 2023, 07:48:38 AM

The war won't have happened if the US and some western countries have kept to their promise of not expanding NATO towards Russian borders. And moreover, both Ukraine and Russia are brothers, just in arms. Russia is simply trying to survive hostile NATO policies.

The war won't have happened if Russia didn't invade Ukraine.

Russia wouldn't have invaded Ukraine if the US hadn't gone back on its agreement to not expand Nato, and if they hadn't pushed Ukraine into harming their own people and some Russians as well.

Cool

Maybe in BADeckerville.

In the real world that "we won't expand NATO" promise is a fantasy, it doesn't exist. Just like the whole "tHeY aRe CoMiTtIng GeNocIdE!11!!" bullshit.

You are mistaken, the promise not to expand NATO to the east is not a fantasy and there is documentary evidence of this.

Unless you are speaking as a current resident of BADeckerville or some other make believe land, you are mistaken. The existence of a document describing what was discussed among non-heads of state during negotiations to establish NATO is not the same thing as what was actually agreed upon by the actual heads of state - which is well documented.

Don't believe me? Just ask Gorbachev:

Quote

Russia Beyond Journalist: One of the key issues that has arisen in connection with the events in Ukraine is NATO expansion into the East. Do you get the feeling that your Western partners lied to you when they were developing their future plans in Eastern Europe? Why didn’t you insist that the promises made to you – particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East – be legally encoded? I will quote Baker: “NATO will not move one inch further east.”

Mikhail Gorbachev: The topic of “NATO expansion” was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a singe Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either.

https://www.rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbachev_i_am_against_all_walls_40673.html

NATO has

It seems that Gorbachev already had memory problems at the time of the interview you quoted. Here is a transcript of his conversation with James Baker on February 9, 1990, I will quote a fragment of the conversation.

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NATO is the mechanism for securing the U.S. presence in Europe. If NATO is liquidated, there will be no such mechanism in Europe. We understand that not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.

Since then, there have been five rounds of NATO's eastward expansion.

During that discussion they were referring to East Germany, not other countries. The meeting happened after the Berlin wall came down, but while the Soviet Union still controlled East Germany. And not even NATO expansion into East Germany ended up being part of the deal. When he went back to Moscow a few months later, he offered even less, that NATO would only stay out of East Germany during a transition period, and that once Germany was unified, all of Germany would be considered part of NATO. Gorbachev was ok with that.

Luckily, we don't need to debate what was or wasn't part of the agreement, they literally wrote it all down. Bush and Gorbachev met in person and signed the treaty. The treaty they signed is the agreement. What was offered during negotiations of the treaty, but not included in the treaty, is not part of the agreement.