Secret documents from 1990 foreshadow war for Ukraine

In 1990, the then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was convinced that the Kremlin would never allow Ukraine to become independent and that he doubted the feasibility of NATO expansion to the east. This is evidenced by declassified documents from the last years of the Soviet Union, The Times reports.

According to redacted documents obtained from the federal archives and published by the German magazine " Spiegel", Kohl's aide wrote that in February 1990, almost two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Chancellor "could imagine a situation in which the Soviet Union would let the Baltic states go". Kohl, however, believes that "this cannot apply to Ukraine".

"Kohl was wrong. On December 1, 1991, Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union, which collapsed 30 days later. But in the long run, Kohl's assessment turned out to be more accurate: In 2008, Putin told President George W. Bush that "Ukraine is not a country", the article states.

It is also recalled that shortly before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin demanded that NATO withdraw its troops and weapons from member states that joined after 1997 and formally abandon the promise that Ukraine would ever be allowed to join. At the time, the Alliance rejected this request.

Citing NATO archives, it notes that US Secretary of State James Baker and Kohl's Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher briefly concluded a formal agreement in 1990 that would have banned any eastward expansion. Although Kohl supported German reunification, he did not support the idea of expanding NATO eastward.

It states that the United States made it clear that it would support reunification if the newly formed German state remained a member of NATO. However, the agreement was never concluded, and in 1997 Russia admitted that it could not veto the accession of former Soviet states to NATO.

At the same time, the publication recalls that Putin called NATO expansion one of the reasons for the invasion of Ukraine.