> Only if you are willing to ignore the facts that don't fit into your model. Namely specific triggers for Putin's actions like 2008's NATO declaration of imminent NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and American involvement in 2014 coup. [0] Or many years of Putin's warnings accompanying NATO expansion.

You are the one ignoring facts. Here's Putin's former senior advisor explaining why this narrative is garbage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFCNwGjko54

Elsewhere, he has also said that he personally attended closed meetings for senior staff as early as 2003 where Putin laid out his plans for Ukraine.

I trust that the language of the video is not a barrier for you.

That's Andrei Illarionov, he says a lot of things.

I opened the video anyway with the intention of watching it, but after seeing the title "Putin's fake about "NATO non-expansion to the East" closed the tab.

Here is why:

"30 years ago today: Kissinger on Russia & NATO expansion Dec. 5, 1994 PBS Newshour, w/ Jack Matlock" [0]

"Matlock: There is one of the factor here that we seem to be forgetting, and we did, though it was not a legally binding assurance, we gave categorical assurances to Gorbachev, back when the Soviet Union existed, that if a United Germany was able to stay in NATO, NATO would not be moved eastward. And, you know, I think that the current Russian government is very clear

Host (interrupts): So we would be..., but that assurance was given to the Soviet Union.

Matlock: That is right. It is not a legally binding, but it was, you might say, a geopolitical deal. And if we simply ignore it, then I, certainly if I were a Russian, it would be hard for me to interpret this, even though it may not be intended that way, and it is not, as anything less than an attempt to shut Russia off from Eastern Europe.

Host: And that was a line that Yeltsin used today, that it would isolate Russia and sow the seeds of discord."

Note that Kissinger doesn't dispute that fact even though he gives different objections.

Matlock used to be an ambassador to Russia in the late days of the USSR but he is not a Russian sympathizer:

"It's not that you refrain from doing something because it will offend Russia. If Russia is doing something that we don't want it to do, we should offend them."

What an arrogant stance.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHm_7T7QNl8&t=706s

Everyone of importance on the Soviet/Russian side has refuted this. See here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43149963 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43353857

Gorbachev himself said that even if they wanted to, officials in the West cannot give such assurances, because the voters can replace them at any moment, and added that if they had had an agreement, they would've written it down for exacly that reason. Soviet diplomats were not dumb.

Not to mention that the alleged assurance is anachronistic, as the Soviet foreign minister at the time has pointed out. Germany bordered the Warsaw Pact and there was nowhere for NATO to "expand" in 1990 and thus nothing to discuss. Map: https://i.imgur.com/TQgnuIF.jpeg

>Everyone of importance on the Soviet/Russian side has refuted this.

Whose people you cite also happen to emigrate to the West or at least from Russia.

>Soviet diplomats were not dumb.

Or very interested in not looking dumb after it turned out that they were fooled. In other words, what they say happen to make them look good.

It makes incredibly valuable when American diplomats say that the promises were given even though it makes them look bad because the promises were broken (or about to be broken).

> Whose people you cite also happen to emigrate to the West or at least from Russia.

Gorbachev and Yazov never emigrated. They both died in Moscow in the early 2020s.

> Or very interested in not looking dumb after it turned out that they were fooled. In other words, what they say happen to make them look good.

This is unfounded speculation. Shevardnadze has explained in detail how this narrative is a misunderstanding (or in many cases, a willful misrepresentation) of the 4+2 treaty. The main issue in early 1990 was the details of German reunification. After East and West Germany became a single state again, would Germany leave NATO? Would NATO be present only in West Germany, or in former East Germany as well? This was the contemporary context, since a unified Germany would share a long border with the Warsaw Pact.

Things often claimed about "NATO promises" are actually right there, written down in articles 4 and 5 of the treaty. The treaty prohibited the stationing of non-German forces and military exercises in East Germany until the complete withdrawal of Soviet troops. Both Gorbachev and Shevardnadze have said that NATO kept its promises and the agreement was concluded when the last Soviet forces left Germany in 1994.

The treaty can be found here, scroll down for links to PDFs in multiple languages: https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=0800000...

>Gorbachev and Yazov never emigrated.

Gorbachev used to live in Germany. [0]

The rest of your comment is again a straw-man argument - Matlock (American ambassador to the USSR at that time) was talking about promises not given in a legally binding way and you are citing some treaty.

[0] https://www.dw.com/ru/mihail-gorbacev-prodaet-bavarskuu-vill...

> specific triggers for Putin's actions like 2008's NATO declaration of imminent NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine and American involvement in 2014 coup. Or many years of Putin's warnings accompanying NATO expansion

So then the war has been an abject failure, right? NATO’s borders with Russia have massively expanded. Putin bamboozled.

Except, of course he didn’t, this has always been a war of territorial revanchism. Putin wants to reconquer Moscow’s old colonies. Both him and Trump are stuck in the colonial past.

"So then the war has been an abject failure, right? NATO’s borders with Russia have massively expanded. Putin bamboozled."

You are mixing up the events of 2014 and 2022. But yes, the war is not quite a success.

"this has always been a war of territorial revanchism"

Nobody goes to conquer and occupy a country of 40 millions with the military force of 150-190 thousand personnel.

"Moscow’s old colonies"

Can you name a single colony where metropole built nuclear power stations, developed heavy industry, shipbuilding, space and military industries? I mean, apart from USSR's "colonies".

The idea of providing infrastructure (ports, railways, telegraph) for Africa and other colonized parts of the world is a common trope in British, French, Belgian and countless other pro-colonial narratives, used to depict the subjugation of people as a benevolent gift of progress. Thank you, massa.

I wasn't talking about transport and communication infrastructure. That's a classic example of straw-man argument.