The History of Russian Diplomatic Opposition to NATO Expansion into the Baltics, Ukraine, and Georgia

Russian Politics. 2024. Vol. 9. No. 3. P. 366–401.

Royce D. P.

While Russia may have been less perturbed by certain other NATO expansions, and accordingly may have expressed less concern about them, it has continuously and emphatically communicated that NATO expansion to the Baltics, Ukraine, and/or Georgia would gravely impinge upon Russia's interests, and thus that Moscow was/is strongly opposed to such expansion. These communications began in the early 1990s, but the US dismissed and rejected this opposition — in some cases, quite consciously and deliberately. Drawing on official US and Russian sources, this article demonstrates that Russia's public stance on NATO's Baltic/Ukrainian/Georgian expansion was/is clear — it simply was not accommodated.

Keywords: opposition, NATO, Russia-NATO relations, expansion, Russia