Russia warned NATO leaders about expansion in 2001 – Times

However, Britain continued to dismiss Russia’s concerns until Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine

NATO leaders have known since 2001 that Russia would “take appropriate steps” against further expansion of the alliance, according to documents recently declassified by the UK and reported by The Times.

A year into Putin’s presidency, then-Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told his NATO counterparts that the alliance’s continued expansion into the territory of the former Warsaw Pact would be a major political error, the newspaper stated on Friday. Sergeyev warned that Moscow would “take appropriate steps” to respond to this enlargement, the article continued.

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.

In his speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007, Putin described this expansion as “a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust,” although the leaders of NATO insisted that their alliance was defensive in nature. After Ukraine refused to abandon its aspirations of joining – which Moscow viewed as an unacceptable security threat – and NATO insisted that Kiev would one day become a member, Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February.

During the dying days of the USSR,Western leaders promised their Soviet counterparts that NATO would not expand into Eastern and Central Europe. As recently as this year, the US denied that this promise was ever made, and insisted that NATO’s membership books must remain open – even for states bordering Russia.

The UK also dismissed Russia’s warnings up until the start of the Ukraine conflict. “Russia has expressed concerns about potential NATO aggression, but we have been clear that those concerns are fundamentally unfounded as NATO is a defensive alliance at its heart," a spokesman for then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared in January.

NATO has since accepted membership applications from Finland and Sweden, and Ukraine formally submitted its own application in September.

(This statement is, “What did you expect?”)

https://www.rt.com/news/569191-nato-expansion-putin-warning/

Over 3,000 bodies of civilians recovered in Mariupol – investigators

Russian officials blamed the deaths on Ukrainian troops who are said to have forced residents to remain in the city

The criminal actions of Ukrainian troops during the battle for Mariupol resulted in thousands of civilian deaths, Russian investigators have claimed. Local authorities have reportedly recovered over 3,000 bodies of people who were allegedly forced by Kiev's troops to remain in the city while the conflict raged.

The figure was revealed in a statement by Russia’s Investigative Committee on Friday, after committee chief Aleksandr Bastrykin held a meeting in Mariupol with officials investigating alleged Ukrainian crimes.

The port city, located in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), saw intense fighting between February and May, as Ukrainian troops were pushed back and encircled by Russian and DPR forces. Russia created humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to leave the city, but the Ukrainian side would not allow them to use the escape routes, Russian officials claimed.

“With no opportunity to leave the city, civilians moved around in search of food and became living targets for theUkrainian punishers, who murdered them using various kinds of weapons,” the statement said.

In April alone, the bodies of 51 civilians were found at positions previously held by Ukrainian forces, while the total number of civilians found in the city was over 3,000, according to the prosecutors.

Russia has opened criminal cases targeting the people directly involved in the alleged transgressions as well as those above them in theUkrainian chain of command. The list includes Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the head of the country’s armed forces, according to the Investigative Committee. They are being probed for offenses related to the use of banned methods of war, with prosecutors collecting evidence of possible criminal orders to kill civilians and prisoners of war.

Officials remarked that identifying many of the victims was challenging. They suggested that people searching for missing relatives in Mariupol be urged to donate their DNA so that the samples could be compared against a database of samples collected from the recovered bodies.

https://www.rt.com/russia/569180-mariupol-civilian-deaths-ukraine/

President Putin has promised growing military co-operation with China as the two countries cement an alliance against perceived Western dominance on the world stage. “We aim to strengthen co-operation between the armed forces of Russia and China,” the Russian leader told President Xi in a video call this morning.

GOOD RIDDANCE, BABA WAWA

Ding dong, the witch is dead.


https://abc7.com/barbara-walters-walter-dies-celebrity-death-abc-news/12632804/

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