Twenty years ago this week, then-President George W. Bush welcomed seven former communist countries into NATO: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
This marked the largest expansion of NATO to date and it pushed the alliance further eastward to Russia’s doorstep, laying the rhetorical groundwork for one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s many justifications for invading Ukraine in 2022.
In the lead up to the invasion, Putin said Russia was “swindled” by the alliance, claiming Moscow was "given promises not to move NATO infrastructure to the East, not a single inch." Contrary to Putin’s claims, there was never a formal agreement to this effect and experts say the Russian leader has distorted history with such assertions.
But this hasn’t stopped Putin from repeatedly accusing NATO of betrayal over the years. And NATO expansion has been at the heart of Putin’s aggressive behavior toward Russia’s neighbors. Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia came just months after NATO welcomed Georgia and Ukraine’s aspirations of joining the alliance. Before it launched a full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia sought guarantees that Ukraine and Georgia would never be accepted into NATO — a demand the alliance rejected.
But Ukraine and Georgia joining the alliance’s ranks remains an unlikely prospect as long as the Russia-Ukraine war continues. Still, with NATO on the verge of celebrating its 75th anniversary next week, the alliance is the strongest it’s been in years. NATO in the past year added two new members — Finland and Sweden — thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Putin hoped to deter NATO expansion by invading Ukraine, but achieved the exact opposite.