Russian President Boris Yeltsin warned US President Bill Clinton in 1997 that Nato's eastward expansion was a “mistake,” but was reassured by Clinton that Nato would “not be a threat to Russia” according to newly declassified US government documents released by the National Security Archive at George Washington University on July 9.

The documents also show that the Partnership for Peace (PFP) alternative to Nato expansion suggested by the US shortly after the fall of the USSR, which included Russia and Ukraine, was only a holding pattern to buy time until Yeltsin won re-election in 1996.

Clinton stopped short of earlier promises made by US Secretary of State James Baker in 1990 to former General Secretary of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev that Nato would not expand “one inch” to the East.

During a meeting in Finland two years before the first former Warsaw bloc country joined the military alliance, Yeltsin explained to Clinton Russia’s concerns about possible Nato expansion and Russia being adamantly opposed to enlargement. "Our position has not changed. It remains a mistake for Nato to move eastward," Yeltsin told Clinton.

Yeltsin stressed that Nato's enlargement should not include former Soviet republics, particularly Ukraine. "I cannot sign any agreement without such language. Especially Ukraine," he added.

But he acknowledged the necessity of engaging with Nato, saying: "I am prepared to enter into an agreement with Nato, not because I want to but because it is a forced step. There is no other solution for today," Yeltsin told Clinton personally at Helsinki in March 1997.

Yeltsin signed off on the Nato-Russia Founding Act in 1997 that formalised relations, according to the documents released on July 9 by the National Security Archive to mark the Nato 75th Anniversary Summit in Washington.

“The documents show that the Clinton administration’s policy in the 1990s emphasising two tracks of both Nato enlargement and Russian engagement often collided, leaving lasting scars on Yeltsin,” the US National Security Archive said in a note on the documents’ content.

The Yeltsin administration had been negotiating with the Clinton administration since 1993 on a (PFP) mechanism, that Russia proposed as an alternative to Nato expansion.

Publicly US officials were reassuring that Nato expansion was no threat to Russia, but the declassified internal documents make it clear that plans to expand Nato were already in motion from 1993.

This dual approach has been documented in various communications, including a cable from the US chargé d’affaires in Moscow, James Collins, warning that Nato expansion without Russian inclusion would be seen as "neo-containment."

Clinton assured Yeltsin that the future European security system would include Russia, not exclude it, as is the case with the current Nato set-up. There was also a proposal that Russia, Ukraine and Belarus could join Nato in 2005.

The documents also detail another earlier key conversation on October 22, 1993, where US Secretary of State Warren Christopher assured Yeltsin in Moscow that the PFP aimed to include Russia alongside other European countries.

Yeltsin, responding to the idea of the PFP, reportedly saying: "This is genius!" However, Christopher later claimed in his memoirs that Yeltsin may have misunderstood the message because he was drunk at the time.

Similar to Gorbachev, Yeltsin proposed a "gentlemen’s agreement" with Clinton to prevent former Soviet republics from joining Nato, suggesting that this understanding be kept confidential, according to the declassified US government documents published by the National Security Archive located at George Washington University.

In return, Clinton assured Yeltsin that Nato's transformation was intended to pose “no threat” to Russia. "If you remember the last time we met, I told you that I was trying to create a new Nato that would not be a threat to Russia but that would permit the United States and Canada to stay in Europe and work with Russia and other countries to build an undivided, free Europe and to deal with other problems," Clinton said, adding he was committed to reassuring the Russian government and people about Nato's changing role.

However, Clinton stopped short of promising to permanently exclude the former Soviet states from Nato. "If we were to agree that no members of the former Soviet Union could enter Nato, it would be a bad thing for our attempt to build a new Nato, but it would also be a bad thing for your attempt to build a new Russia," Clinton told Yeltsin.

He stressed the importance of ongoing consultations between Russia and Nato, stating: "We need to make sure that all these are subjects that we can consult about as we move forward – consult means talk about; it means making sure that we're aware of your concerns and that you understand our decisions and our positions and our thinking."

Russia later joined the Russia-Nato Council, a coordinating body to formalise relations between them, but on October 18, 2021, Russia suspended its mission to Nato and ordered the closure of Nato's office in Moscow as tensions between East and West soared.

Gorby’s verbal promises

Russian President Vladimir Putin has long complained that the West broke verbal promises made to former Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev that Nato would not expand to the east in 1990, just before the collapse of the USSR.

Those claims were backed up by another batch of declassified cables and Western foreign ministry reports – and now freely available on the internet – and include a report by US Secretary of State James Baker, who said that he personally promised Gorbachev and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that Nato would expand “not one inch” to the east on at least four occasions. Multiple other Western leaders made the same promise, the documents show. Gorbachev’s mistake is that he never got those promises in writing which were ignored following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Putin complained about the broken promises in detail in a famous speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 and warned that if it continued Russia would “push back.” In the run-up the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s main demand was for “legally binding iron clad guarantees” that Ukraine would never join Nato – a written form of the same promises.

Nato began expanding eastwards in 1999, when Poland, Hungary and Czechia joined, eventually adding eight new members. The latest additions have been Finland and Sweden, who applied after Russia attacked Ukraine, ending decades of neutrality.