No it is not. The denial of it is a lie. There was not a formal treaty in which NATO undertook not to expand, but Secretary of State James Baker did promise that to Gorbachov in 1989 when it was up to Gobarchov to decide whether to let the wall fall or not. Why would the Soviets/Russians ever have agreed to allow it had they known NATO would be talking about expanding into the Donbas a generation later?
“No it is not. The denial of it is a lie. There was not a formal treaty in which NATO undertook not to expand, but Secretary of State James Baker did promise that to Gorbachov in 1989 when it was up to Gobarchov to decide whether to let the wall fall or not.”
No. Gorbachev has admited that conversation was about post-unification Germany and not moving NATO forces “on inch east” into the eastern side of Germany. It was not a “promise” about anything else.
“Why would the Soviets/Russians ever have agreed to allow it”
That line is parroting Putin’s Russian empire revivalist thinking in a number of ways and ignores, as I have repeated, and as Gorbachev admitted, Baker’s comments were about post-unified Germany at that time, not some future Eastern Europe after the Warsaw pact nations broke free of the disentegrating Soviet Union.
1. Like Putin it posits that the Soviet Union expansion into controlling so many in Eastern Europe, was as Putin believes, really about “Russian” interests more than the expansion of the Soviet communists realm. Yet, that is contrary to how Eastern European’s, freed from the Soviet Union saw it, until Putin began to ressurect that idea. Putin has, contrary to his desires, helped make Eastern Europe suspicious of his motives.
2. Nothing ever said or done with the Soviet Union and between the Soviet Union and others,”gauranteed” that the future security interests any of the former Warsaw pact nations would NOT be determined by their own choices and in accord with what they would see as their interest. No one presumed that “Russia” had a hold on those interests.
3. It has been Putin’s decision to maintain a cold war military stance with western Europe, abrogating every military and missle treaty Putin made with the west. It was Putin’s choosing to remain an adversary, and by doing so maintain “red lines” that no non-dictatorship, peaceful and truly democratic Russia would need. Putin’s own positions and actions have made for the conditions he now uses as excuses for his red lines. Russia could have been to western Europe as Canada is to the U.S., with a similar size common land border neither worries about. PUTIN decided that was not to be. Putin decided not to change the Soviet military position vis-a-vis the west - to him it was always a “Rusian” position not a Soviet position. NATO did not cause that. It was Putin’s choice.