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According to Putin, NATO has illegally expanded eastwards. The former Russian foreign minister disagrees. What was promised in 1990?
Moscow – Not only since the beginning of the Ukraine War the Russian head of state reminds Wladimir Putin like to remember that the NATO broke its promise never to expand further eastwards. Andrei Kozyrev, former Russian Foreign Minister, has now vehemently contradicted this. According to him, NATO’s promise of expansion never existed. It was “not true” that there were assurancesKozyrev told the Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv-Post.
Despite extensive research by the Russian Foreign Ministry during his tenure as minister, his team was unable to find any evidence that Washington ever made such a promise to Mikhail Gorbachev, Kozyrev told the paper. “When I was foreign minister, we tried to find a trace of it in archives and we failed. And Gorbachev … later denied having received any kind of assurance. As far as I know, this is complete nonsense,” the former foreign minister continued. A statement that is in complete contradiction to Putin’s.
“Complexes and stereotypes about the Russian threat” – Putin claims NATO is wrong
Shortly before the Russian attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Putin explained his position on NATO’s eastward expansion in a speech. He claimed that in 1990 the United States had verbally assured that the reunification of Germany would not lead to NATO’s eastward expansion. In addition, the US had said at the time that the accession of Central and Eastern European countries to NATO would improve relations. According to Putin, however, the opposite has happened. The new member states, according to the Russian head of state, have brought “their complexes and stereotypes about the Russian threat” into the transatlantic alliance – and insisted on expanding the defense potential.
Who is Andrei Kozyrev?
Andrei Kozyrev pursued a diplomatic career, first in the Soviet Union and then in Russia, before finally being appointed Foreign Minister under Boris Yeltsin, a post he held between 1992 and 1996. He now lives outside Russia.
For Putin, the attack on Ukraine was therefore a logical step. After all, a possible accession of Ukraine to NATO would have been “a direct threat to Russia’s security” – so action had to be taken, said the Russian president on the eve of the invasion. It was not the first time that he had made such a claim. At the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin claimed that the West was breaking its promise not to expand NATO eastwards. Putin’s predecessors in office had also been keen to lament this broken promise – rightly so?
NATO is allowed to expand eastwards – Russia has ratified a treaty to this effect
According to historian Mary Elise Sarotte, one must always separate “the question of NATO enlargement history from the question of Ukraine”, as she said to the Austrian default noted. What exactly happened then is difficult to determine in retrospect. The truth lies somewhere on the spectrum between the Soviet Union’s feeling of being betrayed and the US claim that the issue never came up at all. What is certain is that the so-called Two Plus Four Treaty exists in a legally binding form. This clearly states that NATO can expand eastwards “beyond the Cold War front line”.
What is the so-called Two Plus Four Treaty?
The Two Plus Four Treaty, officially known as the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, was signed in Moscow on September 12, 1990. A crucial step towards German reunification, it was negotiated and signed by the two German states, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), and the four occupying powers of World War II – the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France.
Important points were:
Sovereignty of Germany: The treaty ended the Allied reservations in Germany and established the full sovereignty of the reunified Germany.
Border regulations: Germany confirmed its existing borders, especially the Oder-Neisse border with Poland, and renounced territorial claims.
Troop withdrawal: Soviet troops were to be withdrawn from the territory of the former GDR by 1994, while Allied troops were allowed to remain in West Germany.
Military restrictions: Germany committed itself not to possess or produce ABC weapons (nuclear, biological and chemical weapons) and to limit the size of its armed forces to 370,000 soldiers.
NATO membership: Germany was allowed to remain a member of NATO, but it was agreed that no foreign NATO troops or nuclear weapons would be stationed on the territory of the former GDR.
Final peace settlement: The treaty represented the final settlement with regard to Germany and replaced the missing formal peace treaty after the Second World War.
Moscow “not only signed this treaty, not only ratified it, but also collected the financial subsidies associated with it,” said the historian. According to sources, the then US Secretary of State James Baker said to Gorbachev during the negotiations: “How about if you gave up your half of the GDR? And we would tell you that NATO is expanding ‘not one inch’ into Eastern Europe.” However, this was purely a thought experiment. George Bush Senior, on the other hand, did not want to commit himself to such a deal. He therefore told his Secretary of State that he had “overstepped his bounds.”
NATO has committed itself voluntarily – Was Gorbachev deliberately left with the wrong belief?
It is true that there is the so-called NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997. This states that in the new NATO member states in Eastern Europe neither nuclear weapons nor large contingents of NATO troops stationed Both sides also committed themselves to respecting the sovereignty of all states. However, according to Sarotte, this founding act is “not a treaty, which means it is not legally binding.”
Journalist Andreas Zumach, who worked between 1988 and 2020, has a different view of the events. U.N.-Correspondent of taz was. In a post on the news blog Extra service He refers to declassified documents from the National Security Archive of the USAAccording to these documents, Gorbachev was deliberately “left to believe” that Baker’s assurance was sincere. At the same time, however, Western government circles were already thinking about expanding NATO to the east. However, according to Zumach, it was undoubtedly a “technical error” that Gorbachev “did not have the promises made in February 1990 put in writing”. (tpn)
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