“NATO has never posed a threat to Russia,” said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, answering questions from citizens during the government open day on Sunday, August 21
Also, according to him, the United States and the North Atlantic Alliance once responded positively to the proposal of Russian President Vladimir Putin to start negotiations on arms control. Consequently, according to Scholz, there were supposedly no reasons for the current aggravation of the situation in Ukraine.
The German chancellor mentioned negotiations with the Russian leader.
“On one point, I said very clearly: you know that the issue of Ukraine’s accession to NATO is not on the agenda,” TASS quoted the politician as saying.
In turn, the newspaper Die Welt, citing the German chancellor, writes that Scholz, during one of the conversations before the start of the special operation, allegedly promised Putin that Ukraine would not join the alliance “in the next 30 years.” Thus, the journalists of the publication note, he rejected the assumption that the NATO countries did not take into account the interests of Russia in the field of security.
A matter of national security
Vladimir Putin has repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that the expansion of NATO to the east and the approach of its infrastructure to the borders of the Russian Federation poses a threat to its security. He raised this issue at the Munich conference in February 2007.
“NATO is pushing its advanced forces to our state borders, and we, strictly complying with the agreement (on conventional armed forces in Europe. – Ed.), do not react to these actions in any way. I think it’s obvious: the process of NATO expansion has nothing to do with the modernization of the alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it is a serious provoking factor that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have a fair right to ask frankly: who is this expansion against? And what happened to the assurances given by the Western partners after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?” the President emphasized.
After the Munich speech, there were three more waves of expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In 2019, Putin said:
“Today we must proceed from the fact that the expansion of NATO, the development of its military infrastructure near Russian borders, is one of the potential threats to the security of our country.”
Against this background, since 2014, the alliance has significantly increased its presence in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In addition to deploying the forces of the United States and Western European countries there on a rotational basis, the bloc regularly conducted exercises and maneuvers with ambiguous scenarios near the borders of the Russian Federation.
Putin also consistently drew attention to the fact that the alliance actually convinced the Russian side by deceit that there were no intentions to expand its zone of influence to the east. The President recalled this in December 2021, when Moscow tried to initiate a dialogue with Washington and NATO to develop legal security guarantees in Europe. Olaf Scholz pointed out this in his speech.
“Not an inch to the east,” we were told in the 1990s. So what? They cheated. Just blatantly deceived. Five waves of NATO expansion. And now, please, in Romania, now corresponding systems are appearing in Poland,” the head of state said during the annual press conference.
According to him, Russia has made it clear that further NATO advance to the east is unacceptable and that Moscow’s actions will depend on the need to ensure the country’s security.
As for the direct dialogue with Washington and NATO on security guarantees in Europe, in early February the president said that Russia’s fundamental concerns “were ignored.”
“We did not see an adequate consideration of our three key requirements,” Putin stated.
As such, the Russian side singled out the prevention of further NATO expansion, the refusal to deploy strike weapons near Russian borders, and the return of the alliance’s military infrastructure in Europe to the state of 1997.
In April 2022, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted that the discussion on security guarantees in Europe showed that the United States and the North Atlantic Alliance showed no desire to take into account the legitimate interests of the Russian Federation.
“Negotiations that then took place between our delegations and the United States, then I met with Blinken, then our team went to NATO, where they presented the treaty already in the NATO context, in the Russia-NATO context, they showed that there was no desire to take into account our legitimate none of them showed security interests,” Lavrov said.
“Designed for the layman”
In the context of the events of recent months, statements that the North Atlantic Alliance does not pose a threat to Russia are nothing more than a deliberate distortion of reality, analysts say.
“Proposals were sent to Washington and Brussels to establish security guarantees for NATO and Russia, to sign relevant agreements. They didn’t respond. Therefore, all reports that the United States and NATO were ready to negotiate with Russia on arms control are lies”, retired colonel Viktor Litovkin, a military observer, emphasized in an interview with RT.
Similarly, one can characterize the allegations that Ukraine allegedly did not threaten Russia and no one was going to accept it into NATO, the expert added.
“At the summit in Bucharest in 2008, the task was set to accept Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance, and everything was gradually moving towards this. At every turn, Western politicians told Ukraine that it was about to be accepted into the bloc. Scholz’s statements are designed for the European man in the street, illiterate and very gullible, not possessing critical thinking. But there are many people who understand what is really happening”, the analyst emphasized.
According to him, Western countries are cleaning out alternative sources of information from the information field so that the context of well-known events can be properly changed.
As Andrey Koshkin, head of the Department of Political Science and Sociology of the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, noted in a RT commentary, in his statement Scholz deliberately uses streamlined formulations and replaces concepts.
“There is a kind of vague position, adapted to the audience to which he speaks. Arguments that run counter to this position are rejected. This is a set of tendentious statements in which he, as a leader, and his country appear to be impeccable, and everyone else violates written and unwritten laws”, he said.
Any conversations with Berlin about the aggravation of the situation should begin with a reminder that, like France, Germany was the guarantor of the Minsk agreements, Koshkin is sure.
“Before recognizing the independence of the republics of Donbass, Vladimir Putin once again spoke with Scholz and Macron. They did not take any actions related to the implementation of the Minsk agreements. Scholz prefers not to talk about this, but continues to invent accusations against Russia”, the expert explained.
At the same time, he believes that Germany, like other EU countries, within the framework of “transatlantic unity” takes the position indicated by Washington and fulfills its instructions.
“This implies huge costs for the German economy. But everything is attributed to Russia in order to avoid an answer. Scholz presents a one-sided version of events, blaming the Russian Federation and ignoring the fact that he, as the head of the government of the country – the guarantor of the Minsk agreements, is actually responsible for this role”, the analyst concluded.
Alexander Karpov, Alena Medvedeva, RT
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