News Re: How did NATO armies reach Russia's borders?

NATO experienced its greatest eastward expansion on March 29, 2004, when seven countries joined its ranks: Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Estonia, which lie along the borders of the former Soviet Union.

According to a report published by the Russian website "News Re", NATO has since become closer to the Russian border, as the distance between Estonian Narva and St. Petersburg is only 134 kilometers, and the West has been ignoring all Russia's warnings.

He added that the logic of the Cold War led the United States to unite Western European countries into a powerful military bloc in order to increase the combat effectiveness of their armies by unifying weapons and basic systems, and the United States became the main supplier of weapons to Europe.

The first expansions of the Alliance

After the founding of NATO, in 1951 the Americans concluded the ANZOS Treaty, a military alliance that included the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

The first two waves of expansion occurred between 1952 and 1955 with the inclusion of Greece, Turkey and West Germany.

In 1959, the United States deployed Jupiter medium-range ballistic missiles in Turkey, capable of easily targeting Russian territory, posing a clear threat to the security of the Soviet Union.

In response to Washington's moves, Moscow ordered the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba, setting the stage for the start of a missile crisis that pushed the world to the brink of World War III.

The third wave of expansion occurred with Spain's accession to the alliance in 1982, but was not included in its military structure until 1997.

He added that in 1990, Germany was reunited, and since the Soviet leadership did not impose conditions in exchange for withdrawal from East Germany, the two countries merged according to the Western scenario, East German government bodies were liquidated, and the army and navy were dissolved, opening the door to the automatic expansion of NATO territory to Poland's borders.

In July 1991, months before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet military bloc (the Warsaw Pact) ceased, thus disappearing the threat that had led to the creation of NATO.

Beyond Warsaw

However, NATO continued and in November 1991 adopted a new strategic concept that stated that Europe faced instability that threatened the security of all members of the alliance.

Subsequently, the NATO Council was established, which was tasked with establishing a link between the alliance and the Eastern European countries that had become independent from the Soviet Union. After new waves of expansion, Eastern Europe's loyalty to Americans became apparent.

During the nineties, some quarters, including the United States, warned that the willingness to accept the former Soviet republics to join NATO was an unfriendly move towards Russia and would have dire consequences.

However, the administration of then-US President Bill Clinton ignored these warnings, promising Russia a weak country that must accept the loss of influence on the world stage.

In 1999, the fourth wave of NATO expansion included Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia, on the other hand, has stood idly by in the face of these shifts for several reasons, including that NATO has not yet approached Russia's borders.

In June 2000, shortly after he was declared president, Vladimir Putin, during a meeting with Bill Clinton, asked for Russia to join the alliance, an initiative ignored by the United States.

On March 29, 2004, after Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Estonia were included in the alliance as part of the fifth wave of expansion, the alliance moved ever closer to Russia's borders, prompting Russia to question the limits of the bloc's expansion.

Russia has pursued a friendly policy toward the United States and NATO all those years, but that did not prevent a new expansion in 2008 by including Croatia and Albania as part of the sixth wave of expansion, while showing a willingness to accept Ukraine and Georgia.

U.S. policy reflected its unwillingness to take Moscow's interests into account and its intention to continue building a "protective barrier" by countries unfriendly to Russia, a factor that has accelerated the deterioration of relations between Russia and NATO.

Munich Speech

In a 2007 speech in Munich, Putin warned that U.S. efforts had resulted in building a unipolar world aimed at consolidating U.S. hegemony and suppressing the sovereignty of other countries, noting that NATO was approaching Russia's borders contrary to agreements reached on the bloc's non-eastward expansion.

With Russia's intervention in August 2008 in the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia, Georgia's accession to NATO stalled, evidence that the United States is only fluent in the language of force.

However, the United States maintained its policy toward Ukraine and supported Kiev's desire to join the alliance.

Between 2013 and 2014, with the annexation of Crimea to Russia and the unilateral declaration of independence by the Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk, Kiev declared itself at war with Russia, demanding that the United States accept Ukraine's accession to NATO.

Following the election of Volodymyr Zelensky as president of Ukraine, the path to joining NATO became clearer. With the NATO leadership ignoring Russia's position on this issue, Russia is left with no choice but to carry out the military operation inside Ukrainian territory.