there's no way the Russians would lie, except to say that there was a cascade of assurances, but only if putin says that. If gorbachev said it never happened, that's the truth. If baker says he said that, he's lying, because Gorbachev is your baseline of truth. Basically, anyone that supports what you're saying is telling the truth, and the declassified national security documents (why would they have to classify such a thing as a verbal "Cascade of Assurances" about nothing further east?) I guess that's all part of this conspiracy that putin put in place. putin put in, hilarious.
so you just ignore the declassified documents, making this whole thing a waste of my time.
It's not just Gorbachev. The minister of defense Dmitry Yazov also refuted this myth, as did the minister of foreign affairs Eduard Shevardnadze and his successor Andrei Kozyrev, along with many others. You are clinging to your interpretation of a few phrases from meeting notes and other insignificant documents while ignoring the actual signed treaties, their historical context and the recollections of the participants in these events.
Shevardnadze, in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, was as clear as one could be:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the end of March 1990, Genscher and the then US Secretary of State James Baker, talked about the fact that there was interest among "central European states" about getting into NATO. You knew nothing of this?
Shevardnadze: This is the first I've heard of it.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did you have a conversation with your colleagues in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary about a possible eastward expansion of NATO in the spring of 1990?
Shevardnadze: No, that was never discussed in my presence.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: The German documents give the impression that Moscow counted on the dissolution of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. Did you really think that would happen?
Shevardnadze: That may have been discussed after I resigned from the ministry of foreign affairs in December 1990. However during my time in office it was not.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was the eastward expansion of NATO ever discussed in the inner circles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1990?
Shevardnadze: The question never came up.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did the subject play a role in the ratification process of the Two-Plus-Four agreement (where the signatories included the two Germanys and the four powers that occupied Germany after World War II) that unified Germany?
Shevardnadze: No, there were no difficulties whatsoever with the ratification process.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, the eastward expansion happened a few years later. Did you feel, at the time, that the German diplomats deceived you?
Shevardnadze: No. When I was the minister of foreign affairs in the Soviet Union, NATO's expansion beyond the German borders never came up for negotiation. To this day I don't see anything terrible in NATO's expansion.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the conference in Ottawa on German unity in February 1990, you had five telephone conversations with Gorbachev. Did you discuss a possible NATO enlargement -- beyond the GDR?
Shevardnadze: No. We only had German reunification on the agenda, nothing else.
so you just ignore the declassified documents, making this whole thing a waste of my time.
i'd like to thank you for that.