Obviously Farage is right to say that Putin is responsible for the indefensible invasion of Ukraine. But as to his more controversial point about Nato expansion, history – much of it recently researched – also backs his claim.
When Nato enlargement first loomed, both George Kennan and Henry Kissinger warned of the likely disastrous effects for Russia-West relations. US secretary of state James Baker’s notorious 1990 promise that enlargement would not go “one inch” beyond the incorporation of East Germany was a clear acknowledgement of the likely Russian blowback, and his subsequent retraction left an abiding Russian conviction of Western chicanery.
Bill Clinton’s 1993 “Partnership for Peace” proposal was specifically devised to kick the issue down the road. It was enthusiastically welcomed by Boris Yeltsin, who was then reduced to despondency and anger when Clinton abandoned it. The Western argument that Nato is a defensive alliance, and so no threat to Russia, cut little ice with Russians who had seen us pooh-pooh the allegedly defensive aims of the Warsaw Pact some years before.
www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/farage-is-telling-uncomfortable-truths-on-ukraine/ar-BB1oYlc6?