“NATO has never promised not to admit new members.
It could not and would not do this: the open door policy was a key provision of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty, as a result of which NATO was founded, ”said the US Secretary of State during a speech at the State Department.
Blinken also said that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in 2014 "made it clear" that "the topic of NATO's non-expansion was not discussed at all."
“There was no promise that NATO would not expand.
Secretary of State James Baker also spoke about this, ”added the head of American diplomacy.
During a press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that NATO was cheating on the issue of not expanding the alliance to the east.
The head of state noted that Russia was "cheated, just blatantly deceived."
He also noted that they hastened to forget about the promises made in words at that time, and “a precedent was set”: since 1999, five more “waves” of expansion of the alliance followed, it included 14 new countries, including the republics of the former USSR.
In turn, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recalled on the air of Solovyov LIVE that the Assistant to the US President for National Security in 1977-1981 Zbigniew Brzezinski, speaking of the assurances given to Moscow about the non-expansion of the alliance, bluntly said: "We deceived them." ...
According to Vladimir Putin, Russia's response to NATO's eastward expansion may be “very different,” the decision will depend on proposals made by military experts.