UNITED NATIONS, February 19. /TASS/. Only firm legal guarantees will suit Russia in concluding European security agreements, Russia’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, said on Saturday.
"Only iron-clad legally binding guarantees this time," Polyansky tweeted.
The diplomat attached to his post a reference to a story in Der Spiegel magazine confirming that the Western countries had really promised the Soviet Union’s leadership in 1991 not to expand NATO to the east. The story was written on the basis of archive documents discovered by US political scientist, Joshua Shifrinson, of Boston Univeristy.
In part, Der Spiegel cites a document concerning a meeting of US, British, French and German foreign ministers in Bonn on March 6, 1991.
"We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations [by the GDR, the FRG, France, the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States] that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe. We could not therefore offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others," the FRG representative, Jurgen Chrobog, said.
It is stressed that such an opinion was identical to the official position of the Helmut Kohl-led federal government and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher. In his statement, says Der Spiegel, Chroborg apparently confused the Elbe and the Oder. Contrary to the diplomat’s claims, at the two-plus-four negotiations Bonn had never said that NATO would not expand beyond the Elbe. In accordance with the treaty united Germany was to become a member of NATO, which would expand it to the Oder.
"And now some people are asking why we do not accept verbal promises and gentlemen’s agreements," Polyansky said about the story in Der Spiegel, adding that the "it was a mistake of Western leaders to break such promises while Soviet and Russian leaders kept theirs."
Russia’s stance
At the beginning of February Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Russia had been cheated, although originally it was promised NATO’s infrastructure would not expand eastwards.
"They said one thing and did something very different," he said, adding that NATO’s open-door policy was not asserted legally.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on December 17 last year published drafts of agreements on security guarantees that Moscow was expecting the United States and NATO to conclude with it. Two treaties - with the United States and the alliance’s members - envisage, among other things, a pledge to refrain from NATO’s expansion to the east, including from the admission of Ukraine, and also restrictions on the deployment of major offensive weapons, including nuclear ones.
Earlier, the Russian president called upon NATO to enter into meaningful negotiations with the aim of giving Russia reliable and long-term security guarantees. He specified that Moscow needed legally binding guarantees, because previously the Western counterparts had defaulted on their verbal promises.
Russia, the United States and NATO have held several rounds of consultations in different formats, but no agreements have been unveiled to this day.