Behind the scenes of peace negotiations. Putin has a demand for NATO and he wants it “on paper”
Moreover, according to the embassy representative, the Russian authorities insist on invalidating the decision made during the Bucharest summit in 2008, at which NATO countries agreed that Ukraine and Georgia should become members of the alliance in the future.
What demands does Russia have towards NATO?
What does Russia want to record 'on paper'?
What promises regarding NATO have been previously made by Western countries?
Which countries joined NATO after the war in Ukraine started?
Legal regulation of these issues is necessary because “all data provided by NATO members themselves in the past regarding oral promises not to expand the bloc were forgotten and ignored at their convenience,” said a representative of the Russian embassy.
He recalled that during the unification of Germany, the leaders of NATO countries promised the leadership of the USSR that the organization had no plans to expand the alliance to the east. Documentary confirmation of this fact is kept in the state archives of Western countries, but is deliberately not published, argue the Russian embassy.
Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army, Moscow sent Washington a draft security guarantees agreement. One of its points was the demand not to expand NATO.
Putin has already demanded not to expand NATO
Last year, Reuters sources familiar with the course of negotiations on Ukraine reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin, as one of the conditions for ending the war, demanded a written resignation from the enlargement of the North Atlantic Alliance, as well as a guarantee of Ukraine's neutral status. Subsequently, the administration of US President Donald Trump refused to consider Kiev's membership in the alliance and proposed replacing it with security guarantees.
Putin has repeatedly said that Western countries “deceived” and “tricked” Russia by promising not to expand NATO to the east. Former secretary general of the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, emphasized that the organization is not pursuing aggressive expansion. — It is the eastern countries that decide to join NATO, he said, calling such a decision “democratic and free.”
After the start of the full war in Ukraine, Finland and Sweden joined the North Atlantic Alliance. As a result, the total length of Russia's land and sea border with NATO countries has almost doubled — to 3,000. km, and the Baltic Sea effectively became the internal “lake” of the alliance.
