Page 28 - RusRPTNov21

Roots of the split
The break down in diplomatic ties comes as no real surprise as relations with Nato have been in terminal decline for years for decades.
While tension between Nato and Russia escalated dramatically following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014 and the outbreak of an undeclared war in the Ukraine’s western Donbas region, the Russian side have long complained that Nato broke promises made to Mikhail Gorbachev in the last years of the Soviet Union that Nato would not expand “one inch” to the east.
Putin reiterated these claims at his famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 and has been more recently vindicated by declassified embassy cables and other western documents that confirm the promises were made verbally to Gorbachev by multiple western leaders, including US Secretary of State James Baker and German chancellor Helmut Kohl, although nothing was ever put in writing.
From the Russian perspective the show down with the west started even earlier in 2003 when the US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM missile treaty, a key Cold War security agreement that limits the deployment of short range missiles.
28 RUSSIA Country Report November 2021 www.intellinews.com