The expert explained why the West refused guarantees of non-expansion of NATO

WARSAW, Feb 10Guarantees on the non-expansion of NATO to the east were not given formally, but only in a gentlemanly form, Stanislav Belen, professor at the Institute of International Relations at Warsaw University, said. It will be difficult for NATO to engage in a dialogue with the West on European security issues, while noting that Moscow is ready to continue dialogue with the United States regardless of sanctions threats. There was such a situation as it was, and the situation of that time should not be looked at through a modern prism, but should be looked at from the point of view of the then conditions,» Belen said in connection with the 15th anniversary of Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech at the Munich Security Conference. He recalled that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Soviet Union was in a rather deplorable state. “The Soviet Union was in such a state, one might say in a state of agony before disintegration, that it took at face value all the gestures that were directed to it by Western leaders. And most of these were oral assurances. We call this gentleman's agreements, or with a word of honor,” said the source of the agency.08:00Putin's demonization turned against the West»These were the promises that were most often given — one can get the impression — on their own behalf of those leaders: the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Together with the NATO Secretary General, they assured Gorbachev that the West will not claim to expand its operational space to countries other than a united Germany,» he added. «There is an opinion that the word of honor, or gentlemen's agreements, exist as long as they exist. on behalf of those who voiced them. And not on behalf of the states that are obliged to comply with them under the next generations of leaders,» Professor Belen noted. At the same time, he notes that it was not about formal agreements. “This, in fact, is this dispute. These were not formal agreements, but only guarantees on parole. And when Russia has been asking about those guarantees, about those promises for many years, then in the West, unfortunately, such the interpretation that today neither the leaders who made those promises, nor the state in respect of which these guarantees were given — there is no Soviet Union,» the agency's interlocutor said.08:00″Everything came true»: what Putin warned about 15 years ago»It doesn't matter to them that Russia is the legal successor of the Soviet Union. What matters to them is that Russia is already a different player in this game, if we are talking about caliber, rank between empires. The West simply used the weakness of Russia in the 1990s for its expansion and did it by the method of fait accompli, without asking anyone for permission,» he concluded. At the end of 2021, Russia published draft treaties with the United States and agreements with NATO on safeguards security. Moscow, in particular, demands from its Western partners legal guarantees of refusing further expansion of NATO to the east, from joining the Ukrainian bloc and from establishing military bases in post-Soviet countries. The proposals also contain a clause on the non-deployment of NATO strike weapons near the borders of Russia and the withdrawal of alliance forces in Eastern Europe to the positions of 1997. Later, the United States and NATO sent to Moscow written responses to Russia's proposals on security assurances.