MOSCOW, April 24. /TASS/. The West deluded the former Soviet Union’s last leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who was a "gullible man," when it promised NATO would not expand, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.

"They don’t tell you that after the [collapse] of the Soviet Union, when Russia emerged, NATO, with its military potential expanded toward Russia’s borders six times. Six times! They deceived Gorbachev because he was a gullible man.We had, so to speak, a honeymoon with the West when we thought that they are romantic, honest and committed to their word," he said, adding that it "should be categorized as a big lie."

Before what happened in 2014, "everything was disguised by fine diplomatic curtseys, empty declarations, hidden by non-working, non-existent formats," he noted. "And they are lying that there have never been nine waves of NATO expansion."