On the assurances Gorbachev was given that NATO would not move "one inch" to the West
Hal Turner has posted this excellent article giving background on the history of. Russia’s struggle with NATO.
It contains videos so I suggest you go to the original HERE
Last week, India made clear it will not cease buying Russian Oil. Today, China said the same thing. They are talking about US Secondary Sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine War.
The collective West claims that Russian Oil Sales are "bankrolling Russia's war against Ukraine." It never occurs to the collective West that THEY are making Ukraine's war possible through weapons sales and financial aid.
The Russians point out that none of this would have been necessary had the USA and NATO honored their promise to Mikhail Gorbachev from February 9, 1990, when then US Secretary of State James Baker, delivered a promise from then US President George H.W. Bush (the father). The promise went like this: "If the Soviet Union agrees to allow East and West Germany to re-unify, then NATO will not move one inch eastward."
Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs and Chicago professor John Mearsheimer argue that during the lengthy negotiations on German unification, US, European and German leaders made explicit assurances to Gorbachev that there would be no future NATO expansion eastward. The promise was repeated in several other meetings with Gorbachev, and in several other meetings with other Soviet officials, and it is recorded in the U.S. National Security Archive, shown below:
To give you an idea of how big a deal this would be for the Soviets, they had to withdraw three-hundred-thousand Soviet troops from East Germany in order to make the re-unification possible. It was a gigantic risk for the Soviets national security.
In the end, Gorbachev agreed. He withdrew the troops and the two Germanys were re-unified. There was the peace.
Even if only verbal and not in a formal treaty, Gorbachev understood the assurances as a “binding agreement.” Subsequently, Soviet leaders made decisions on that basis and acted on them - withdrawing the Red Army from Germany and dissolving the Warsaw Pact.
1996 Election Year: With an eye on the Polish and Eastern European vote in northern Illinois, Bill Clinton campaigned on enlarging NATO into Eastern Europe. (Bill Clinton carried Illinois and handily defeated Bob Dole.)
12 March 1999: The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO. A weakened post-Soviet Russia, led by Boris Yeltsin, whose economy was controlled by a bevy of Oligarchs, could do nothing about it. Powerless, Yeltsin was “infuriated” with “his friend Bill Clinton” for breaking with past US assurances on NATO expansion.
31 Dec 1999: After years of heavy drinking and suffering from health problems, Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Vladimir Putin becomes Prime Minister of Russia. Yeltsin’s last words to Putin: “Take care of Russia.”
29 March 2004: George W. Bush is now president, and seven more Eastern European countries join NATO: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - largest wave of NATO enlargement in its history.
April 2008: At the NATO summit in Bucharest, George W. Bush announces that Ukraine and Georgia are on an “immediate path to NATO.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “I was very sure that Putin was not going to just let that happen. From his perspective, this would be a declaration of war,” she recalled in 2022.
2008: Bill Burns, ambassador to Russia, sent a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: Across the board, he wrote, the Russian political class told him, “Ukraine is the reddest of red lines” – “Nyet means nyet.”
The memo, CLASSIFIED, was ultimately leaked to WIkiLEAKS and made public. That memo spells-out that the US and NATO all knew, asking Ukraine to join NATO would have serious ramifications, up to and including war with Russia! Here is that CLASSIFIED memo:
William Joseph Burns, who signed the memo above "BURNS" became the 8th director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Biden administration from March 19, 2021 to January 20, 2025.
He tucked tail and ran when Trump got sworn-in for a Second Term because he KNEW he allowed this Ukraine thing to become a war when none of it had to be.
Back to the Historical Time-line:
22 Feb 2014: Just as the Sochi Winter Olympics got underway, the “Maidan” coup in Kyiv erupted in violence. State Department official Virginia Nuland boasted that since the 2004-2005 “Orange Revolution,” the US had spent $5 billion on regime change in Ukraine.
Nuland made that boast on a telephone call which was intercepted by Russian Intelligence, and made public.