DeplorableVatnik

[Robin Monotti @robinmonotti]

Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner

Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University

The documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991, that discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels. 
The documents reinforce former CIA Director Robert Gates’s criticism of “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”

The first concrete assurances by Western leaders on NATO began on January 31, 1990, when West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher opened the bidding with a major public speech at Tutzing, in Bavaria, on German unification. The U.S. Embassy in Bonn (see Document 1) informed Washington that Genscher made clear “that the changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’” The Bonn cable also noted Genscher’s proposal to leave the East German territory out of NATO military structures even in a unified Germany in NATO.

This latter idea of special status for the GDR territory was codified in the final German unification treaty signed on September 12, 1990, by the Two-Plus-Four foreign ministers (see Document 25). The former idea about “closer to the Soviet borders” is written down not in treaties but in multiple memoranda of conversation between the Soviets and the highest-level Western interlocutors (Genscher, Kohl, Baker, Gates, Bush, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Major, Woerner, and others) offering assurances throughout 1990 and into 1991 about protecting Soviet security interests and including the USSR in new European security structures. The two issues were related but not the same. Subsequent analysis sometimes conflated the two and argued that the discussion did not involve all of Europe. The documents published below show clearly that it did.
The “Tutzing formula” immediately became the center of a flurry of important diplomatic discussions over the next 10 days in 1990, leading to the crucial February 10, 1990, meeting in Moscow between Kohl and Gorbachev when the West German leader achieved Soviet assent in principle to German unification in NATO, as long as NATO did not expand to the east. The Soviets would need much more time to work with their domestic opinion (and financial aid from the West Germans) before formally signing the deal in September 1990.

As late as March 1991, according to the diary of the British ambassador to Moscow, British Prime Minister John Major personally assured Gorbachev, “We are not talking about the strengthening of NATO.” Subsequently, when Soviet defense minister Marshal Dmitri Yazov asked Major about East European leaders’ interest in NATO membership, the British leader responded, “Nothing of the sort will happen."

[Dmitry Polyanskiy 🇺🇳 @Dpol_un]

A real hero. Should be on front pages of all mainstream media. Like Russian boy Fedor who saved two little girls from the bullets of Ukrainian terrorists

[DeplorableVatnik @vataattack]

A highly topical poster, as true as 80 years ago: "Kill German beasts!"

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

After months in Ukraine training soldiers, Ret Col Andrew Milburn of @TheMozartGroup mercenary firm gets sauced on camera & spills the beans:

Ukraine is a "corrupt, fucked-up society" run by "fucked-up people"

Ukrainian soldiers "kill dudes who surrendered," commit "atrocities"

[Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal]

Merkel reveals the Minsk Agreement was a stalling tactic that allowed the West to militarize Ukraine as an anti-Russian proxy and fortify it for an inevitable war. I'm struggling to find any coverage or analysis of this remarkable confession in English language mainstream media.

[Agamemnon López @tasmaniacal1]

"Ukrainian Nazis" is now a permanent fixture on Twitter Trending, as it should have been since 2014.

[DeplorableVatnik @vataattack]

@DefenceU What is Putin with Jesus facial hair doing up there?

[Davide Mastracci @DavideMastracci]

There’s a Ukrainian restaurant in Toronto called Barrel House Korchma, which currently has a 4.8 star rating on more than 300 Google reviews. These reviews also show that it’s filled with flags of the Nazi collaborator, genocidal UPA group, as well as pictures of Stepan Bandera.

[Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) @la_UPC]

En relación a las revelaciones sobre el autor de las obras de la exposición de la Biblioteca Ferraté, informamos que las obras se han retirado y que la Universidad desconocía la ideología de la persona que las firma. La UPC rechaza radicalmente el nazismo y lamenta la situación.

[Dr.Snekotron @snekotron]

Least racist Ukrainian (paraphrasing): "Russian identity does not exist because there is no genetic basis to Russian nationhood. They are a bunch of Armenians, Jews, Chechens"

The blood and soil logic of the European lizard brain.

[Nina 🐙 Byzantina @NinaByzantina]

Replace “Russian” with another ethnocultural background, read it out loud, and see how it sounds. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Anatolij Sharij @anatoliisharii]

Zelensky, who closed a huge number of media outlets, will receive a German award… "For freedom of the media." Are you completely fucked up there, idiots?

[Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled]

Yeltsin's top western advisor on privatization/neoliberal reforms (which Aslund personally profited from on the side). His catastrophic advice was the equivalent of bombing Russia's cities & rural towns throughout the 90s—directly causing the Putin backlash we're now paying for.

[Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled]

The Azov Shuffle, favorite editorial desk dance move

[SAM Volhov @SAM_Volhov]

Residents of Mariupol, who managed to escape to the DPR from the hell set up in the city by Ukrainian nationalists, spoke about the atrocities of the Azov militants * who tortured and killed their own compatriots.

[DeplorableVatnik @vataattack]

@GeromanAT 52 tanks is like 260 tankers. That's a lot of blowing, but I've seen better records in, cough, war movies

[Dan Cohen @dancohen3000]

7 years ago today, neo-Nazis murdered Ukrainian journalist Oles Buzina days after his name and address appeared on a government blacklist. Today, opposition figure @anatoliisharii is on the same list as Zelensky’s SBU and neo-Nazis are trying to kill him. https://t.co/frolc1zN4S