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I'll be honest, I'm pretty hesitant to write an effort post in response to a user who will delete half the dialogue later especially when their comment is 90% questions.
Did you read that article you linked? Which part was the hearsay? The author admits exactly what Putin is accusing American (and NATO) officials of doing in the first few paragraphs, then writes it wasn't written down in a treaty which means it doesn't matter, and then throws a bunch of confetti in the air about the Soviet Union not being entirely dissolved at the time, and also NATO talked about enlargement in 1995 years later when Eastern block countries asked, and then Russia signed a document which in no way, shape, or form, endorses or acquiesces to NATO enlargement in 1997, but NATO enlargement didn't happen until 1999 (I suppose that the Russians opposing and protesting this at the time using the previous assurances wasn't important enough for this gem of an article). And also, like there was some intra-NATO debate about adding new members which undermines the "myth of betrayal" except this fact is irrelevant to the Russian's claims about betrayal of the assurances the author already admitted in the sixth paragraph. Wow, that's a great example of European media. Hopefully something significant was lost in translation.
And I meant "rapprochement," I'll correct the message and thank you.
Not the dialogue, but the user account. On this engine it should make the posts themselves remain, AFAIK.
And is it really an effort post? Mostly I'm just asking for you to back up the multiple claims that you've made in your original one. Which I think should be expected by default, no? And if you did back them up previously, I can't know that either, because 1) there are no references to those supporting comments in your current one and 2) your comment history is private, so I can't be Ctrl+F-ing through it to try finding the relevant parts.
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