> I gave you a link to the video where former American ambassador to the USSR is saying "though it was not a legally binding assurance, we gave categorical assurances to Gorbachev, back when the Soviet Union existed, that if a United Germany was able to stay in NATO, NATO would not be moved eastward".
Eduard Shevardnadze, the USSR's minister of foreign affairs at the time, clarified that the context was the potential stationing of foreign NATO troops (US, UK, etc) in East Germany after reunification. There was nowhere further "east" to move at the time, since East Germany bordered the Warsaw Pact. German reunification was agreed upon with the understanding that foreign troops would not be moved directly to the border with the Warsaw Pact, because the Pact had not yet had time to establish military infrastructure after retreating from East Germany. That was the agreement and parties adhered to it.
Shevardnadze also said that in 1990, it was unimaginable to the Soviet leadership that the Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself would dissolve. Therefore, there was no reason to discuss potential NATO membership of countries and territories that were under Soviet control at the time. And according to him, this was indeed not discussed at all during his tenure (1985-1991); not internally, and not with foreign partners either.
The putinesque sob story that NATO promised never to accept any new members is an anachronistic perversion of these events.
He didn't. Talks about NATO's future were limited to East Germany alone and written down into the articles 4 and 5 of the so-called "4+2 treaty" from 1990, which settled the post-reunification status of East Germany. In the treaty, it was agreed that foreign NATO forces would not enter East Germany before Soviet forces had withdrawn (by 1994).
It's absurd to even suggest anything beyond that, because post-reunification Germany was to border the Warsaw Pact. Even theoretically, there was nowhere for NATO to "expand." Gorbachev's team did not foresee the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact the following year.
To put this into perspective, the US provided Ukraine with $64.62bn of military aid and $50.72bn of humanitarian and financial support in the four years between January 2022 and December 2025.
80 Days is a really wonderful literary game that captures the joy and adventure of travel (quite a nice escape during the pandemic). There's tons of replayability with different routes and subplots to discover.
Sponsorblock offers by far the best experience. It skips over channel intros and outros, engagement prompts, sponsored segments, tangents, etc (configurable per channel) and offers jumping to "highlight" (that is, the most important part of the video).
Highly ironic that the best experience is free, and no paid option gets even close. Tim Cook watching paid Youtube on Apple TV device has far worse experience than some random kid with Firefox and Sponsorblock gets for free.
> They have such beautiful names for this: "The end of history". Yes, really. "The peace dividend". "The unipolar moment". "Military-to-civilian conversion".
Who is this "they"?
* "The end of history" - coined by Francis Fukuyama, an American political scientist.
* "The unipolar moment" - coined by Charles Krauthammer, an American political columnist.
* "The peace dividend" - older term, popularized by George HW Bush, an American president.
* "Military-to-civilian conversion" - older term, popularized by Seymour Melman, an American professor of industrial engineering.
But it is a talking point. The cable simply shows an American diplomat who has swallowed the hook and reiterates how Russians want to be perceived as thinking. One of the main efforts of Russian diplomacy is to invite foreign dignitaries and representatives to Russia, surround them with "researchers" and "experts" working directly under Kremlin guidance, to create a false impression for guests of how "Russian experts" "really think". This creates so-called useful idiots who unknowingly become champions of Putin's regime, believing they possess some inside knowledge that others lack.
The narrative shared in the cable is hilariously detached from reality to anyone who is intimately familiar with modern Russia. Putin, who lets OMON beat and sexually assault peacefully assembling (not even protesting!) Russians within sight of his office windows, is supposedly worried about the treatment of Russians abroad.
You're saying that the US embassy in Moscow doesn't know how Russian politicians and military figures think, and is full of useful idiots.
Another theory is that the US embassy has constant contact with Russian political and military figures, is very familiar with how they think, and accurately reported their views back to DC in order to help the US government formulate its foreign policy.
Ironically, I think you're the one who has swallowed a narrative hook, line and sinker.
It is the US government that threw reciprocity overboard, openly and publicly humiliating allies and partners throughout the past year, threatening to invade several NATO allies, publicly mocking soldiers from allied countries who had fought and died in US-led wars, and kicking Ukraine at its most vulnerable moment in an attempt to coerce it into surrender. Not to mention global economic warefare in the form of illegal trade barriers. The US government championed isolationism, and this is what the first taste of isolationism feels like.
For most of the world, the US-Iran war carries minimal upside (the reduction of Iran-sponsored terror groups in the Middle East) for considerable risk (terror attacks on their citizens). Previously, allies and partners were willing to grant access to their airbases and provide other forms of support and put their citizens at risk to maintain good relations with the US, because that meant something. With Trump in the White House, the US has become an unreliable and unpredictible banana republic, where government action is not grounded in sound policy or long-term international relationships, but depends entirely on the moods of El Presidente and serves his personal wallet.
He has made time and time again clear that he is not bound by any earlier agreements and commitments, so it should not come as a surprise when others respond with the same and propose starting negotiations from a clean slate.
There was no coup in Ukraine in 2014. It's one of those immediately revealing things like height of the chimneys in Auschwitz; just barely mention them and we all immediately know who you are.
Sure. And you keep babbling and restating your point instead of proving it because you've got an overwhelming proof, you're just too polite to share it with us.
Is this trolling by stupidity? You are irredeemable. I wasn't talking about elections, I meant everything before it that caused premature elections in 2014.
Was there something major that happened in 2013-2014 involving violence that interrupted the term of elected, legitimate president Yanukovich? Can you recall?
> Was there something major that happened in 2013-2014 involving violence that interrupted the term of elected, legitimate president Yanukovich?
Yes; under extreme Russian pressure, Yanukovych blocked the passage of the highly anticipated Ukraine-EU trade treaty. This led to massive protests. He sent paid thugs (titushky) to harass and beat the protesters, but the protests only grew larger. When he panicked, about 100 protesters were shot in a single day. From that moment, he was politically a corpse and lost the support of even his own party. He ran away into hiding to escape arrest, and the Ukrainian parliament assembled and unanimously voted to hold snap elections, which took place a few months later.
This is the polar opposite of illegal seizure of power by a small group of people, or a coup.
Are there any key details you're leaving out? Is there a chance you creatively picked what to leave out in a way that serves the view you're sympathetic to?
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