Putin wants NATO to formally pledge against eastward expansion
Photo: Dmitry Peskov (Getty Images)
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that verbal assurances regarding NATO’s non-expansion to the East are not enough for Russia. In this regard, he hinted that this point should be put in writing, according to the Russian news agency Interfax and other Russian media outlets.
Peskov claims that promises regarding NATO’s non-expansion to the East were made as far back as the time of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russia’s first president, Boris Yeltsin; however, the alliance has continued to expand on multiple occasions.
“This was back in the days of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Since then, NATO has expanded eastward five or six times. Therefore, of course, such statements—which are so important to us—must be backed by actions aimed at, in fact, likely formalizing NATO’s non-expansion in writing,” the Kremlin spokesperson said.
What else to know
A few days ago, Alexei Drobinin, a high-ranking diplomat at the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated that Russia is considering concluding non-aggression pacts with individual NATO countries. According to him, such agreements could become part of a new European security architecture, which Moscow proposes to discuss in the context of the peace process regarding Ukraine.
Today Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that the future architecture of European security depends on when and how the war in Ukraine ends. He said that if Ukraine joins NATO, it will be one kind of architecture, and if it does not, it will be another.
Also, Trump’s special envoy Jared Kushner reported that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has agreed to allow Europe to participate in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
