Russia is reportedly planning to ask NATO to withdraw troops and equipment from countries that joined the alliance after 1997 as a condition for peace in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has frequently criticized NATO’s “eastward expansion” into the former Eastern Bloc states, citing it as a major security threat to Russia. Putin has long argued that the expansion of NATO broke an informal assurance made to Soviet leaders during the discussions over German reunification at the end of the Cold War. That has led to online claims that the alliance had promised at the time to move “not one inch to the east.”

Now, there is growing speculation that Putin will demand NATO withdraw to its pre-1997 borders, before several former Warsaw Pact countries joined the international military alliance. In the upcoming round of Ukraine peace talks, Russia is expected to request that NATO withdraw its troops, weapons, and military infrastructure from the nations that joined the alliance after 1997. That could include Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland—and further impact 16 of the 32 current NATO member states.

Will NATO Really Consider Russia’s Demands?

NATO is not expected to even entertain the Russian demands, which the alliance views as impossible and a non-starter.

Surprisingly, this would not be the first time such demands were made and rejected. In December 2021—weeks before Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine—Putin floated a broader NATO rollback in exchange for a Russian promise of nonaggression in Ukraine. That demand was flatly rejected by the Western powers and NATO. In fact, after the war began, the security situation grew even worse for Russia: the historically neutral nations of Finland and Sweden, long cagey about NATO membership due to concerns about relations with Russia, entered the alliance in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

It would be against the interests of those nations bordering Russia to leave the alliance, but this may be more than just an issue of mutual defense. Moscow may be taking a “maximalist” negotiating tactic—which is essentially Russia’s way of starting with an extreme, uncompromising demand far outside the realistic zone of agreement, in order to make any subsequent, more reasonable counter-offer look like a major concession by comparison. (President Donald Trump, who Putin hopes to win over, is no stranger to this tactic; he prominently advocated its use in his 1987 bestselling book The Art of the Deal.)

However, this has the risk of creating mistrust—or, more accurately, additional mistrust within NATO—as the demand is simply too outrageous to be taken seriously.

Putin Didn’t Care About NATO’s Eastward Expansion—Until He Did

What is notable about this demand, both in late 2021 and now, is that Putin didn’t express concern about NATO’s expansion in the late 1990s. In a March 2000 interview, the new Russian president stated he would not even rule out Russia joining NATO, and later confirmed his interest during a June 2000 meeting with US president Bill Clinton.

Even as late as May 2002, Putin offered little or no objection and even cooperated with the international military alliance during his first years in office. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon, Russia cooperated with the West, sharing intelligence and even supporting US operations in Afghanistan.

So what changed?

In 2004, NATO admitted Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—three former Soviet republics—into the alliance, creating a direct land border with Russia for the first time since the end of the Cold War. The expansion, which also included Romania and Bulgaria in the southeast, coincided with Putin’s consolidation of power; the Russian leader targeted independent media tycoons and wealthy oligarchs who held political influence, culminating in the arrest of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003 and the subjugation or state-takeover of private networks. From 2004 onward, the Kremlin increasingly claimed that Western leaders had broken informal 1990 verbal assurances given during German reunification that NATO would not expand eastward.

In a 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, Putin condemned NATO’s eastward creep. Still, Russia’s relations with the West were still generally positive, even after a four-day war between Russia and Georgia in 2008.

Several additional factors—particularly NATO interventions in places such as Libya and Kosovo, as well as a series of anti-government protests in Russia that Putin regarded as Western-backed—further soured the Russian leader on NATO. Internal Russian propaganda increasingly portrayed the alliance as an aggressive, interventionist body designed to unseat regimes that might be friendly to Moscow.

Still, many historians and political analysts argue that the claims of NATO expansion as a security concern are simply a strategic justification for nations such as Ukraine adopting a Western-oriented governance and a shift away from Moscow’s sphere of influence. The 2013–2014 protests in Ukraine, which led to the resignation and exile of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych and his replacement with an explicitly pro-Western government, solidified this trend. (Russia has falsely alleged that Yanukovych was overthrown in a coup, and has attempted to spread this viewpoint in the West.) 

Last week, the United States floated EU membership as a form of security guarantee for Ukraine, and for Kyiv to abandon any bid to join NATO, as a path to peace. Closer ties to Europe might still be a barrier for the Kremlin, as it seeks to regain control over lands it once dominated.

About the Author: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. He has contributed to dozens of newspapers, magazines, and websites over a 30-year career in journalism, including Forbes and Clearance Jobs. He is based in Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author at Editor@nationalinterest.org.

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