Thread by @nata_druhak

1/11 It’s huge! Declassified archives reveal new facts on 🇩🇪 #Ostpolitik. It shows that the enlargement of NATO and independence of Ukra🇺🇦 not in interests of Germany in 1991. Curious to read this in the context of the war and 🇩🇪's dependence on Russia.

bit.ly/3kAl7J4

2/11 In 1991, German chancellor Helmut Kohl found himself faced with the three Baltic republics pushing for independence and seeking to leave the Soviet Union. He felt they were on the "wrong path”. Kohl, of course, had rapidly moved ahead with Germany’s reunification.

3/11 Kohl felt that a dissolution of the Soviet Union would be a "catastrophe" and anyone pushing for such a result was an "ass." He repeatedly sought to drum up momentum in the West against independence for Ukraine and the Baltic states.

4/11 Kohl felt that Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania should be more patient about their freedom – and should wait around another 10 years. And even then, Kohl felt the three countries should be neutral ("Finnish status"), and not become members of NATO or the European Community.

5/11 Kohl and his foreign minister Genscher believed that if the Baltic states left the Soviet Union, Ukraine would then follow, after which the entire Soviet Union would collapse, and Gorbachev would fall as well.

6/11 When over 90 percent of Ukrainian voters cast their ballots in favor of independence in a referendum, though, both Kohl and Genscher changed course. Germany was the first EC member state to recognized Ukraine’s independence.

Hypocrisy of German politics is nothing new.

7/11 In November 1991 (!), Kohl offered Yeltsin to "exert influence on the Ukrainian leadership" to join a confederation with Russia and other former Soviet republics. German diplomats felt that Kyiv was demonstrating a "tendency toward authoritarian-nationalist excesses."

8/11 Genscher on Poland, Hungary and Romania to the NATO: The countries certainly have the right to join the Western alliance, but the focus should be on ensuring "that they don’t exercise this right." (1991)

Now is the same focus concerning Ukraine and Georgia, right?

9/11 For a time, the Germans were even in favor of NATO issuing an official declaration that it'd not expand eastward. But during the visit to Washington in May 1991, Genscher was told that an expansion "cannot be excluded in the future”. Then he stepped back.

10/11 Western allies tended to count on the Germans' analysis of the situation. French President Mitterrand complained about the Baltics, saying "you can’t risk everything you have gained (with Moscow – eds.) just to help countries that haven’t existed on their own in 400 years."

11/11 Recently, the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the German parliament @MiRo_SPD (SPD) spoke in favor of examininig failures of German Ostpolitik. He believes that Germany "de facto denied the sovereignty" of its neighboring countries.

Please, do it!