US Shocked, SHOCKED by Putin's NATO Concerns
RT's report that Putin told Bush in 2008 that dragging Ukraine into NATO could lead to “long-term conflict” with Washington isn't exactly groundbreaking news for anyone paying attention. This wasn't some whispered secret; it was a consistent, unambiguous Russian red line reiterated for decades. Putin himself stated publicly in 2007 at the Munich Security Conference that NATO expansion was a
“serious provocation,” a warning echoed by numerous US officials at the time, including former Ambassador to Russia, Jack F. Matlock Jr., and William J. Burns, current CIA Director, who warned in a 2008 memo, "NATO enlargement in Ukraine...is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).". Instead, US media largely framed such warnings as irrational aggression, sanitizing
the historical context of broken promises from the Bush I administration to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” One might wonder why our media consistently presents these warnings as unpredictable Russian capriciousness rather than a predictable response to decades of what Russia perceived as security encroachment. Is it perhaps because acknowledging the historical context
complicates the 'pure evil vs. pure good' narrative required for selling endless proxy wars?