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Excerpt from the Archbishop Vigano declaration on Ukraine/Russia
The NATO Expansion
First of all, it is necessary to remember the facts, which do not lie and are not susceptible to alteration. And the facts, however irritating they are to recall to those who try to censor them, tell us that since the fall of the Berlin Wall the United States has extended its sphere of political and military influence to almost all the satellite states of the former Soviet Union, even recently, annexing into NATO Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary (1999); Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania (2004); Albania and Croatia (2009); Montenegro(2017); and North Macedonia (2020). The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is preparing to expand to Ukraine, Georgia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Serbia. Practically speaking, the Russian Federation is under military threat– from weapons and missile bases– just a few kilometers from its borders, while it has no military base in similar proximity to the United States.
To be considering the possible expansion of NATO into Ukraine, without thinking that it will arouse Russia’s legitimate protests, is nothing short of puzzling, especially given the fact that in 1991 NATO pledged to the Kremlin not to expand further. Not only that: at the end of 2021, Der Spiegel published drafts of a treaty with the United States and an agreement with NATO on security guarantees. Moscow demanded legal guarantees from its Western partners that would prevent NATO from further eastward expansion by adding Ukraine to the alliance and also from establishing military bases in post-Soviet countries. The proposals also contained a clause on the non-deployment of offensive weapons by NATO near Russia’s borders and on the withdrawal of NATO forces in Eastern Europe back to their 1997 positions.