Revealed: the Kremlin files which prove that Nato never betrayed Russia

Nato is taken more seriously in Russia than in the West. Here, Nato is largely seen as yet another international bureaucracy, as useless as the rest of them. But to a former KGB officer like Vladimir Putin, the Cold War has never really ended, and Nato is an exceptionally dangerous and perfidious enemy. You may not criticise corruption in Russia, he says, as that would play into Nato’s hands. Putin had no choice but to invade Ukraine — in the Ukrainians’ own interests, to protect them against a Natotakeover.

Putin’s case against Nato is that it has deceived Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev says he agreed to withdraw from Soviet central Europe only after being promised that ‘Nato would not move a centimetre to the east’. This claim would seem to be corroborated by the handwritten notes of James Baker, the former US Secretary of State. ‘Nato — whose juris. would not move eastward,’ he scribbled during a conversation with Gorbachev in 1990.