Putin’s Hard Reminder on NATO 15 Years Ago Became a Reality in the Ukraine Crisis

MOSCOW – President of Russia Vladimir Putin gave a stern warning during a speech in Munich 15 years ago about the dangers of NATO expansion. The warning came true in the crisis in Ukraine now.

On February 10, 2007, Putin delivered a landmark speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he criticized NATO’s post-Cold War eastward expansion as a serious provocation that risks sparking an arms race and breaking Western promises not to develop.

Putin during his speech referred to statements made in 1990 by the then Secretary General of NATO; Manfred Woerner, who said the fact that the alliance was not prepared to deploy troops outside German territory gave the Soviet Union strong security guarantees.

Putin, in the same speech, later asked: “Where is this guarantee?”

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Fifteen years later Moscow is still asking the same question. In December 2021, Russia unveiled a draft proposal that seeks to prevent further NATO expansion in addition to improving US-Russian arms control arrangements.

Although progress has been made in negotiations on several issues, Moscow feels the United States (US) as NATO leader has ignored most of its most critical demands, such as pushing NATO’s military infrastructure to its 1997 position and assurances that Ukraine will never join the alliance.

The US has not only ignored Moscow’s demands but has even deployed more troops to Europe in recent weeks, claiming that Russia is preparing to attack Ukraine.

Moscow not only denies the accusations, but also accuses the West of fueling these fears to justify sending more weapons and troops to the region.

“Putin’s warnings, including in his 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, about NATO’s eastward expansion resonate loudly today,” Cato Institute Senior Fellow Ted Galen Carpenter told Sputnik.

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