Lol we didn't lie to Russia about anything, we didn't even lie to the USSR about NATO expansion. Don't take my word for it, here's Gorbachev himself saying so:
Russia invading Ukraine was never about NATO. NATO is responsible for the longest period in Russia's history without them being invaded. They even drew down there military forces on the Finish border after they joined NATO.
Despite Moscow's threats over Finland's NATO accession, Russian bases near the Finnish border are virtually empty as Russia has redeployed personnel and equipment from these bases to Ukraine. Source: Finnish broadcaster Yle, citing sources in intelligence, as reported by European Pravda Details...
www.yahoo.com
Repeating Russian nonsense won't make it true.
That does not prove what you think it proves. It’s a classic “Google” rebuttal.
Gorbachev is spinning his legacy as an old man. He is faulted for being duped in his own country and the on-camera question is his planned opportunity to respond. But notice how he does it. He dodges altogether whether there was a promise and whether he accepted it. He changed the subject to whether the guarantee was to be part of the
written treaty and why (somehow) it couldn’t be. He glides past the issue of what he was promised and whether he believed it.
But the declassified documents tell a different story.
He and his foreign minister did accept the guarantee, but he dodges that point altogether. He doesn’t even acknowledge that discussion.
Listening to him there, I wonder if the idea that the promise could not be put in the treaty was his even Gorbachev‘s own idea (as he seems to explain his acceptance of its reasoning) or if it was suggested to him and yet a another way he was duped. Many (most?) agreements have secret portions. Even if you somehow think that a promise to expand NATO impugned the dignity of the Warsaw Pact (which I guess he is implying) that wouldn’t prohibit it being stated in a secret attachment.
I see no reason it couldn’t be in the public portion. Does anyone else? Maybe what Gorby means in his vague “explanation” is that the US sold him on the idea that our European allies wanted it secret for domestic political reasons! And he bought that! However that be, he fell for it.
But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t promised and believed the lie. It goes some way toward explaining the rise of “the realists” in Russia and the fall of more liberal forces.
Our President was a former head of the CIA, btw.
Gorbachev doesn’t want to be remembered as the Jimmy Carter or worse of his people. Carter was in communication with the Ayatollah when the latter was still in France. Carter desired and signed off on the return of the ayatollah and on the overthrow of the Shah because Carter trusted the word of the Ayatollah that it would be a peaceful change of government and liberties would be guaranteed by the new Islamic regime.