So Dems have also went to town on two NATO comments. One from Putin's interview with Carlson and the other from the mouth of Trump. In regards to the former, Putin said that NATO had agreed to not expand eastward after the end of the Warsaw Pact. Dems have responded by saying that there was no such agreement. Except:
I suppose the LA Times, an outlet I stopped following some time ago, was a Kremlin front organization back in 2016.
Leaders in Moscow, however, tell a different story. For them, Russia is the aggrieved party. They claim the United States has failed to uphold a promise that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, a deal made during the 1990 negotiations between the West and the Soviet Union over German unification. In this view, Russia is being forced to forestall NATO’s eastward march as a matter of self-defense.
The West has vigorously protested that no such deal was ever struck. However, hundreds of memos, meeting minutes and transcripts from U.S. archives indicate otherwise. Although what the documents reveal isn’t enough to make Putin a saint, it suggests that the diagnosis of Russian predation isn’t entirely fair. Europe’s stability may depend just as much on the West’s willingness to reassure Russia about NATO’s limits as on deterring Moscow’s adventurism.
Does this mean there was an actual signed contract? No.
Anyone who knows how these things go know that there are often a lot of unsaid things and unmentionable "promises". Often these "gentlemens agreements" are "off the books" and are used by BOTH parties to have plausible deniability later on when the political winds change.
"We never promised that..."
In early February 1990, U.S. leaders made the Soviets an offer. According to transcripts of meetings in Moscow on Feb. 9, then-Secretary of State James Baker suggested that in exchange for cooperation on Germany, U.S. could make “iron-clad guarantees” that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” Less than a week later, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to begin reunification talks. No formal deal was struck, but from all the evidence, the quid pro quo was clear: Gorbachev acceded to Germany’s western alignment and the U.S. would limit NATO’s expansion.
Gorbachev, in my opinion was negotiating from an extremely weak position and probably wanted such a promise in writing but could not get the concessions he wanted/needed with such a demand. At best, the "iron clad guarantee" was merely a stalling tactic, but if it had been a promised kept, then would Ukraine be in the position it is in today?
I doubt it.
Nevertheless, great powers rarely tie their own hands. In internal memorandums and notes, U.S. policymakers soon realized that ruling out NATO’s expansion might not be in the best interests of the United States. By late February, Bush and his advisers had decided to leave the door open.Like I said.
It’s therefore not surprising that Russia was incensed when Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states and others were ushered into NATO membership starting in the mid-1990s. Boris Yeltsin, Dmitry Medvedev and Gorbachev himself protested through both public and private channels that U.S. leaders had violated the non-expansion arrangement. As NATO began looking even further eastward, to Ukraine and Georgia, protests turned to outright aggression and saber-rattling.
So yeah. There was an agreement. Paper agreement? No. As they say, get it in writing. Verbal agreements rarely hold up in court.