{"id":263038,"date":"2022-12-31T07:02:17","date_gmt":"2022-12-31T07:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=263038"},"modified":"2023-01-02T09:04:51","modified_gmt":"2023-01-02T09:04:51","slug":"russia-warned-nato-leaders-about-expansion-in-2001-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=263038","title":{"rendered":"Russia warned NATO leaders about expansion in 2001 \u2013 Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>RT.com \u2013 Dec 30, 2022<\/strong><\/h1>\n<p>NATO leaders have known since 2001 that Russia would <em>\u201ctake appropriate steps\u201d<\/em> against further expansion of the alliance, according to documents recently declassified by the UK and reported by The Times.<\/p>\n<p>A year into Putin\u2019s presidency, then-Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told his NATO counterparts that the alliance\u2019s continued expansion into the territory of the former Warsaw Pact would be a major political error, the newspaper <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.md\/P6cJa#selection-911.110-911.255\">stated<\/a> on Friday. Sergeyev warned that Moscow would <em>\u201ctake appropriate steps\u201d<\/em> to respond to this enlargement, the article continued.<\/p>\n<p>The largest expansion of the alliance to date would take place three years later, with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joining the US-led military bloc.<\/p>\n<p>In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin described this expansion as <em>\u201ca serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust,\u201d<\/em> although the leaders of NATO insisted that their alliance was defensive in nature. After Ukraine refused to abandon its aspirations of joining \u2013 which Moscow viewed as an unacceptable security threat \u2013 and NATO insisted that Kiev would one day become a member, Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.<\/p>\n<p>NATO leaders have known since 2001 that Russia would <em>\u201ctake appropriate steps\u201d<\/em> against further expansion of the alliance, according to documents recently declassified by the UK and reported by The Times.<\/p>\n<p>A year into Putin\u2019s presidency, then-Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told his NATO counterparts that the alliance\u2019s continued expansion into the territory of the former Warsaw Pact would be a major political error, the newspaper <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.md\/P6cJa#selection-911.110-911.255\">stated<\/a> on Friday. Sergeyev warned that Moscow would <em>\u201ctake appropriate steps\u201d<\/em> to respond to this enlargement, the article continued.<\/p>\n<p>The largest expansion of the alliance to date would take place three years later, with Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joining the US-led military bloc.<\/p>\n<p>In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin described this expansion as <em>\u201ca serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust,\u201d<\/em> although the leaders of NATO insisted that their alliance was defensive in nature. After Ukraine refused to abandon its aspirations of joining \u2013 which Moscow viewed as an unacceptable security threat \u2013 and NATO insisted that Kiev would one day become a member, Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/news\/569191-nato-expansion-putin-warning\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>However, Britain continued to dismiss Russia\u2019s concerns until Moscow launched its special military operation in Ukraine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":263039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-Hidden_and_Revisionist_History","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=263038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263040,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263038\/revisions\/263040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/263039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=263038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=263038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=263038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}