Russia–NATO relations
Relations between the NATO military alliance and the Russian Federation were established in 1991 within the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council. Russia–NATO co-operation grew during the 1990s and early 2000s. Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program in 1994. The NATO–Russia Founding Act was signed in 1997, creating the NATO–Russia Permanent Joint Council through which they consulted each other and worked together on security issues. This was replaced in 2002 by the NATO–Russia Council. During this period, there were suggestions of [|Russia becoming a NATO member]. However, relations have become hostile, largely due to Russia's attacks on Ukraine since 2014.
Relations took a downturn during the 2nd term of Russian president Vladimir Putin, following the 2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. In his 2007 Munich speech, Putin condemned the eastern enlargement of NATO, and in 2008 Russia invaded Georgia. Relations worsened in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and invaded eastern Ukraine, starting the War in Donbas. NATO responded by suspending co-operation, and many member states imposed sanctions on Russia. To deter further Russian aggression, a small NATO tripwire force was deployed in the Baltic states and Poland, at the request of those countries. Some political analysts see this as the beginning of a Second Cold War. Over the following years there was a rise in military incidents, while Russia repeatedly probed NATO defenses and carried out covert assassinations in NATO countries. A few NATO members began helping Ukraine's military of their own accord.
In 2021, Russia massed troops on Ukraine's borders. That October, NATO expelled eight Russian officials from its headquarters for alleged spying; in retaliation, Russia suspended its mission to NATO and ordered the closure of the NATO office in Moscow. Putin falsely claimed that NATO was building up its military infrastructure in Ukraine and would attack Russia. That December, Russia issued far-reaching demands to NATO. The alliance rejected some but offered to negotiate others if Russia stopped its military buildup. Some Western analysts suggested Putin was using NATO as an excuse for Russian expansionism.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, starting the largest war in Europe since World War II and causing a breakdown of NATO-Russia relations. At the 2022 NATO summit, the alliance declared Russia "a direct threat to Euro-Atlantic security" and announced it was bolstering its defenses on its eastern borders. Many NATO member states imposed further sanctions on Russia and sent military aid to Ukraine to help it resist the invasion. Although Russian officials and propagandists claim that NATO is waging a "proxy war" against them, NATO maintains that its focus is on helping Ukraine and the alliance defend itself, not on fighting Russia.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, tensions have escalated into Russian hybrid warfare against NATO member states, which includes sabotage, assassination plots, airspace violations, cyberattacks, and disinformation aimed at destabilizing the alliance and disrupting aid to Ukraine.
Background
Following the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany which dissolved the Allied Control Council and the Council of Foreign Ministers, NATO and the Soviet Union began to engage in talks on several levels, including a continued push for arms control treaties such as the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. There were also conversations regarding the NATO's role in the changing security landscape in Europe, with U.S. President George H. W. Bush, U.S. secretary of state James Baker, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl, West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and Douglas Hurd, the British foreign minister. The West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in a meeting on 6 February 1990, suggested the alliance should issue a public statement saying that, "NATO does not intend to expand its territory to the East." In 1990–91, Western policy makers did indeed operate on a premise that NATO had no purpose in expanding to Eastern Europe, and that such a move would badly hurt long-term prospects for stability and security in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. According to several news reports and memoirs of politicians, in 1990, during negotiations about German reunification, the administration of then-US president George H. W. Bush made a ‘categorical assurance’ to the then-President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev: If Gorbachev agreed that a reunified Germany was part of NATO, then NATO would not enlarge further east to incorporate the Warsaw Pact countries in the alliance. The rationale was to allow for ‘a non-aligned buffer zone’ between the Soviet border and that of the NATO states. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, Gorbachev denied those claims and stated that the promise from NATO not to enlarge eastward is a myth. He also said, "The decision for the U.S. and its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990." In 1992, i.e. only a few months after the USSR disintegrated, the US openly expressed intention to invite former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO.Growth of post-Cold War cooperation (1990–2004)
Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze made a first visit to NATO Headquarters on 19 December 1989, followed by informal talks in 1990 between NATO and Soviet military leaders. In June 1990 the Message from Turnberry, often described as "the first step in the evolution of NATO-Russia relations", laid the foundation for future peace and cooperation. In July 1990, NATO secretary-general Manfred Wörner visited Moscow to discuss future cooperation. In November 1990, the Soviet Union and NATO states signed the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.Formal contacts and cooperation between the newly founded Russian Federation and NATO began following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, within the framework of the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, and were further deepened as Russia joined the Partnership for Peace program on 22 June 1994.
In September 1994, Yeltsin addressed the UN General Assembly and mentioned the role of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in European security. Russia had previously proposed increasing the role of the CSCE to the detriment of NATO. Yeltsin's national security aide Yuri Baturin noted that after the end of the Cold War, "the time of NATO has passed," and therefore the alliance "should change its mechanisms and goals taking into account Russia's military and political weight". Baturin believed that "a new mechanism of European security could be born from the combination of the CSCE and NATO, where the CSCE bodies would represent the political and diplomatic part, and NATO bodies would represent the military part". But Yeltsin himself did not make such a statement.
Yeltsin had thought that the Partnership for Peace would be an alternative to NATO membership rather than a path to it, and after it was announced in December 1994 by NATO that this is not the case, he began to oppose eastward NATO enlargement. Yeltsin adopted opposition to NATO enlargement as official policy in 1995. However, he continued efforts to cooperate with NATO. In May 1995, after a visit by Clinton to Moscow during Russia's Victory Day celebration, Yeltsin believed Clinton would help his reelection campaign in 1996, which was his main concern. He then authorized Andrei Kozyrev to sign Russia's country cooperation program within the PfP.
NATO-Russia mission in Bosnia
In late 1995 the U.S. and Russia reached an agreement for the Russian military to participate in the Implementation Force, the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina tasked with ensuring the implementation of the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian War. On 15 October 1995, a Russian General Staff delegation arrived at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in Mons, Belgium, and made the command and control arrangements for the deployment of Russian troops. A Russian general and his staff were appointed to SHAPE, with the general being given the position of Deputy to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe for Russian Forces. A brigade of the Russian Airborne Forces was put together for the mission and was under the tactical control of Multi-National Division, led by a U.S. general, and under the operational command of SACEUR through his Deputy for Russian Forces. It was the first time the Russian military participated in a NATO operation and the first joint military operation between Russia and the countries of NATO since World War II.The Russian involvement in Bosnia and the presence of a Russian military staff at NATO's headquarters was praised by both sides as a success, and General George Joulwan, the NATO supreme commander at the time, said that this contributed to the signing of the NATO-Russia Founding Act the following year.
NATO-Russia Founding Act and Permanent Joint Council
On 27 May 1997, at the NATO Summit in Paris, NATO leaders and Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed the "Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security", a road map for NATO-Russia cooperation. The act had five main sections, outlining the principles of the relationship, the range of issues on which NATO and Russia would work together, the military dimensions of the relationship, and the ways to foster greater military-military cooperation.Yeltsin said the agreement would "protect Europe and the world from a new confrontation and will become the foundation for a new, fair a stable partnership". United States National Security Adviser Sandy Berger called it a "win-win agreement" and said it showed that "a new NATO would work with a new Russia to build a new Europe". Though Yeltsin called NATO enlargement a mistake, he said "the negative consequences of NATO's enlargement will be reduced to the minimum through the NATO–Russia deal".
The Founding Act affirms that "NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries", and that they "will build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security". It acknowledges that "NATO has expanded and will continue to expand its political functions". The Founding Act states that NATO has "no intention, no plan and no reason" to station nuclear weapons on the territory of new member states; meaning new NATO members cannot participate in the alliance's nuclear weapons sharing.
The Act established a forum called the "NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council" for bilateral NATO-Russia discussions, consultations, cooperation and consensus-building. This gave Russia a voice in NATO, but not a veto over its internal affairs; likewise, NATO could not veto any actions of Russia. Russia's Permanent Mission to NATO was set up in Brussels, including the office of Russia's Chief Military Representative to NATO.
As part of the efforts of the PJC, the NATO-Russia Glossary of Contemporary Political and Military Terms was created in 2001. The glossary was the first of several such publications on topics such as missile defense, demilitarization, and countering illicit drugs to encourage transparency in NATO-Russia Relations, foster mutual understanding, and facilitate communication between NATO and Russia contingents. The Glossary of Contemporary Political and Military Terms was especially timely given the NATO and Russia cooperative efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.
Some analysts have argued that since the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea the Founding Act has been a "dead letter".