A rather interesting thing happened this week, barely reported - in response to a resurgent production of the “evidence” that NATO promised not to expand, some Russians presented some other information from the same period.
Putin, Dugin, Zhirinovsky, and a few others, were in a camp that in effect thought that the post-USSR “geopolitical reality” would be that the so-called “commonwealth of independent states” and some of the states that used to be under the Warsaw Pact, would be absorbed as vassals, back into the Russian sphere of influence. Specifically, the named states included Ukraine, Belarus and Khazakhstan. They were the camp that utterly rejected the independence petitions of some regions of the Russian Federation (like from Chechnya and Tatarstan).
In 1997, Russia and NATO signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act, establishing cooperation and consultation, AND confirming Russia accepted NATO’s open door policy. This was of course after the Budapest Memorandum and Belovezha Accords had already confirmed that Russia agreed that countries that were not already part of the Russian Federation, would remain independent of the RF.
This week, some of the papers from that time were published. Khazakhstan in particular may be interested to know that in some of them, Putin and other fellow travellers made it abundantly clear that they saw it, as well as Ukraine, as a fake country that has the temerity to assert that it is independent of Russia.
Belarus is the exception - and that is only because Lukashenko has always accepted vassal statehood in return for Russia keeping him propped up as leader for life.
Some of the ‘stans are already starting to get openly frosty at Putin’s abusive relationship with them. Chinese backing is starting to look preferable to the continued stagnation in the service of Muscovy.
As more information surfaces about what the western Russian & Muscovite revanchists REALLY think about the vassal regions / states to the east, one does wonder how much longer Russia can count on their subservience. Khazakhstan is far from the only one that is seriously reconsidering its loyalties.
Typo in my comment #24, last paragraph, 1991, not 1001.
Apparently Dugin and Putin are trapped in their own reality if they imagined the Warsaw pact countries would come running joyfully home to momma Moscow. On the other hand there are American “America Firsters” who don’t seem to realize that many who held that view before WW2 and Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor, were in fact Hitler or German supporters or actual spies or agents. Now this same crowd views Putin and Russia as something to ignore, or even spy or troll for.
Meanwhile, as I said before, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are cooperating jn building a southern fuel pipeline between China and Europe. I think their future alliance with Turkey is more likely than with China.