VIENNA, October 18. /TASS/. The failure of NATO leaders to honor their promises not to expand the alliance eastward has taught Russia not to be naive in its relations with the West, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the Vienna-based international organizations Mikhail Ulyanov said.

"These commitments were violated. Now NATO propagandists claim that leaders of the Alliance never promised to abandon eastward expansion. It was a painful, but useful lesson for Russia: don’t be naive when you deal with the West," he wrote on X.

As an example of such a pledge, the Russian diplomat cited a statement made by the then German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher back in 1990, where he said that NATO had no plans to expand its defense structures eastwards, including to the territory of the former German Democratic Republic.