NATO logo banners in front of the organization's headquarters in Brussels. File photoBERLIN, Feb. 20 NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on ARD television that he did not believe that the alliance had violated its promise not to expand eastward. So he answered the question of whether Russia is right in his statements that the alliance had broken its word, and commented on media reports about the discovery of an archival document in which Western countries declared the unacceptability of the organization's expansion.
"No. NATO makes decisions together with 30 member countries, there is no decision anywhere in which the NATO countries agreed to abandon what is written in the founding NATO treaty, the Washington Treaty", Stoltenberg said.
According to Stoltenberg, the treaty states that European countries can join NATO, which is also stated in other international documents that «define security in Europe», including the Helsinki Final Act and the 1990 Charter of Paris. Stoltenberg's interview was translated into German .Earlier, Spiegel reported that a 1991 document was found in the UK National Archives, in which Western countries declared the eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance unacceptable. The document, previously classified as «secret», was discovered by Boston University professor Joshua Shifrinson. It refers to the meeting of representatives of the foreign ministries of the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany, which took place in Bonn on March 6, 1991. The meeting discussed the security of Poland and other states of Eastern Europe. It followed from the document that the meeting participants agreed that the membership of Eastern European countries in NATO is «unacceptable», the publication noted. listen to Russia's concerns At the end of 2021, Russia published drafts of a treaty with the United States and an agreement with NATO on security assurances. Moscow, in particular, demands from its Western partners legal guarantees of refusing further eastward expansion of NATO, joining the Ukrainian bloc, and 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 the alliance's forces in Eastern Europe to the positions of 1997. Europe to consider whether NATO expansion will bring peacePosted by: Nikita Stoma