Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed in his end-of-the-year press conference that Western “promises that they had given us about refraining from expanding NATO were being ignored.”  Just two days earlier in a Dec. 17 meeting with the Russian Defense Ministry’s Collegium, Putin said Russia was “insisting” that NATO fulfill a supposed promise not to enlarge. He made a similar claim in a Dec. 4 press conference in New Delhi. The notion that Moscow received a promise that NATO would not enlarge has become a standard Putin talking point.

It’s a canard.

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev denied the supposed promise had been made. Boris Yeltsin, the first Russian president after the Soviet breakup, did not raise it publicly or with his American counterpart. And Putin himself also did not raise it for the first seven years of his presidency.

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