This is from the memoir of current head of CIA William Burns. In 1989 he served under Secretary of State James Baker in a strategic planning role as communism fell. Here he outlines negotiations re German reunification - take note of highlighted part in context of Ukraine now.
More on the negotiations - the Russians aren’t lying about NATO:
More from Burns. Here he is discussing how the Russian foreign policy establishment felt about NATO expansion in 1995 under Yeltsin, long before Putin was on the scene. No one listened then either:
Clinton went ahead with NATO expansion despite warnings from US embassy in Moscow that it was a bad idea. Here is Burns noting that George Kennan, who developed original containment policy toward USSR, viewed it as huge error:
And here is Burns summing up his view of NATO expansion - keep in mind he published this in 2019, before this current war.
Here is Burns in a private email to Secretary of State Condi Rice in 2008. MAP refers to ‘Membership Action Plan,’ and was a neocon push - Dick Cheney in particular - to rapidly expand NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia. Russian elite - not just Putin - was totally opposed:
Burns described his final meeting with Putin as US ambassador. This was way back in 2008:
Sometimes I read that no one was ever proposing Ukraine for NATO, that Putin made it up. That’s not how current CIA director Burns described it. Here is statement from 2008 at Bucharest summit, shortly after meeting from prior tweet:
Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.
A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.