‘Russia warned NATO leaders about expansion in 2001’
RT | December 30, 2022
NATO leaders have known since 2001 that Russia would “take appropriate steps” against further expansion of the alliance, according to documents recently declassified by the UK and reported by The Times.
A year into Putin’s presidency, then-Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told his NATO counterparts that the alliance’s continued expansion into the territory of the former Warsaw Pact would be a major political error, the newspaper stated on Friday. Sergeyev warned that Moscow would “take appropriate steps” to respond to this enlargement, the article continued.
The largest expansion of the alliance to date would take place three years later, with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joining the US-led military bloc.
In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin described this expansion as “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust,” although the leaders of NATO insisted that their alliance was defensive in nature. After Ukraine refused to abandon its aspirations of joining – which Moscow viewed as an unacceptable security threat – and NATO insisted that Kiev would one day become a member, Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.
During the dying days of the USSR, Western leaders promised their Soviet counterparts that NATO would not expand into Eastern and Central Europe. As recently as this year, the US denied that this promise was ever made, and insisted that NATO’s membership books must remain open – even for states bordering Russia.
The UK also dismissed Russia’s warnings up until the start of the Ukraine conflict. “Russia has expressed concerns about potential NATO aggression, but we have been clear that those concerns are fundamentally unfounded as NATO is a defensive alliance at its heart,” a spokesman for then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared in January.
NATO has since accepted membership applications from Finland and Sweden, and Ukraine formally submitted its own application in September.
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From the Archives
Israel’s military indoctrination of children
By Stephen Lendman | Al-Ahram | May 6, 2010
The modern roots of Zionism go back to its founding at the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897, its programme being the “establishing for the Jewish people of a publicly and legally assured home in Eretz Yisrael”. Five decades later, this was accomplished by dispossessing indigenous Palestinians, denying them the right to their land, creating a new Jewish identity, legitimising Jews as rightful owners, and using superior military force to support the state against defenceless civilians who were no match against their powerful adversary.
Leading up to and after its war of independence, Israel stayed politically and militarily hard line, negotiating from strength, choosing confrontation over diplomacy, and naked aggression as a form of self- defence and occupation in order to seize as much of historic Palestine as possible and secure an ethnically pure Jewish state. These policies were called “Israelification [and] De-Arabisation” to preserve a “Jewish character”.
In his book, The Making of Israeli Militarism, author Uri Ben-Eliezer says writing about Israeli militarism involves “ventur(ing) into an intellectual minefield”, given Jewish history under the Nazis and the perception of Israel as a safe haven. Yet, decades of Arab- Israeli conflict have produced seven full-scale wars, two Intifadas, and many hundreds of violent incidents.
Ben-Eliezer believes that, beginning in the 1930s, militarism “was gradually legitimized within the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, then within the new state [it was] crystallized into a value, a formula, and an ideology.” Over time, it acquired a dynamic of its own, and then, during the 1948 war, it “acquired full legitimacy” and became decisive in setting policy.
Politics and militarism were wedded to create a militaristic view of reality. Thereafter, it was institutionalised to the point that “the idea of implementing a military solution to [political problems] was not only enshrined as a value in its own right, but was also considered legitimate, desirable, and indeed the best option.” … continue
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Aletho News 
“During the dying days of the USSR, Western leaders promised their Soviet counterparts that NATO would not expand into Eastern and Central Europe. As recently as this year, the US denied that this promise was ever made, and insisted that NATO’s membership books must remain open – even for states bordering Russia”.
And, all this time Vladimir Putin was interfering with America’s electoral process (according to America’s lying politicians).
It would seem that the word of any American politician or President, is not worth a bean these days.
Best wishes to the American people, but, your Politicians/Presidents words mean Nothing to anyone. It is “where the Truth goes to die”…..
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