nato hq

© Dursun Aydemir / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

A newly discovered document from March 1991 shows US, UK, French, and German language officials discussing a pledge made to Moscow that NATO would non expand to Poland and beyond. Its publication by the German magazine Der Spiegel on Fri comes equally expansion of the U.s.-led bloc has led to a armed services standoff in Eastern Europe.

The minutes of a March half dozen, 1991 coming together in Bonn between political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, France, and Germany contain multiple references to "2+iv" talks on High german unification in which the Western officials made it "articulate" to the Soviet Wedlock that NATO would not push into territory east of Deutschland.

"We made it clear to the Soviet Union - in the 2+4 talks, as well equally in other negotiations - that we exercise not intend to do good from the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Eastern Europe," the certificate quotes United states of america Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Canada Raymond Seitz.

"NATO should not aggrandize to the east, either officially or unofficially," Seitz added.

A British representative too mentions the existence of a "general understanding" that membership of NATO for eastern European countries is "unacceptable."

"We had fabricated it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would non extend NATO beyond the Elbe [sic]," said West German diplomat Juergen Hrobog. "We could not therefore offer Poland and others membership in NATO."

nato meeting

© screenshot via Kommersant
Screenshot of the minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting of United states, UK, French and German diplomats discussing NATO and Eastern Europe

The minutes subsequently clarified he was referring to the Oder River, the purlieus between Due east Germany and Poland. Hrobog further noted that West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Strange Government minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had agreed with this position equally well.

The certificate was plant in the UK National Athenaeum by Joshua Shifrinson, a political science professor at Boston Academy in the US. It had been marked "Hush-hush" but was declassified at some bespeak.

Shifrinson tweeted on Friday he was "honored" to work with Der Spiegel on the certificate showing that "Western diplomats believed they had indeed made a NATO non-enlargement pledge."

"Senior policymakers deny a non-expansion pledge was offered. This new document shows otherwise," Shifrinson said in a follow-up tweet, noting that "beyond" the Elbe or Oder by whatsoever standard includes Eastern European countries to which NATO started expanding just eight years later on.

During a major printing briefing in December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Due west had promised the Soviet Matrimony NATO would not aggrandize "a single inch" to the east, but "brazenly deceived" and "cheated" Moscow to exercise just that.

Responding to these comments, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the brotherhood "has never promised not to expand." In an interview with Der Spiegel later, Stoltenberg repeated that "there has never been such a hope, there has never been such a behind-the-scenes bargain, it is simply non true."

NATO admitted Poland, Hungary, and Czech republic in March 1999, just earlier launching an air war against Yugoslavia without the permission of the United nations Security Quango. This put NATO directly on the Russian border - the enclave of Kaliningrad - for the first time ever. The next round of expansion in 2004 included the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, placing NATO'due south eastern frontier just 135 kilometers (84 miles) from Leningrad.

In a series of security proposals made public in December, Russia demanded NATO publicly renounce expansion to the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia and withdraw Us forces to the 1997 boundaries of the bloc, among other things. The US and NATO have rejected this, arguing the alliance's "open up door" membership policy is a fundamental principle for them.