‘You have short memory!’ Russian UN envoy attacks Peston for ‘not using Google properly’

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg updates on Ukraine crisis

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ITV’s Political Editor Robert Peston sat down with Dmitry Polyanskiy and asked whether the potential conflict in Ukraine was overblown. Mr Polyanskiy called it a “ridiculous situation” and blamed Western “hysteria” over fears Russia is set to invade Ukraine before pointing out Russia had little interest in war. But when asked to provide evidence of NATO’s supposed agreement they would not expand eastwards – used by Russian officials to justify their build-up of troops – Mr Polyanskiy said Mr Peston had a “short memory” and could not “use Google properly”.

Speaking on ITV’s Peston, Mr Polyanskiy was asked about the situation in Ukraine and whether Russian invasion is imminent.

Mr Peston asked: “[Putin] has consistently said he doesn’t want NATO expanding and he says at the end of the cold war Russia was given assurances that it wouldn’t expand.

“But, we’ve all been busily looking for where these assurances might have taken place.

“And we can’t find any evidence of those assurances.”

Mr Polyanskiy scoffed and replied: “Well I think you have very short memory and maybe you can’t use Google properly.

“Because there are lots of documents like this and the documents were published here in the United States since I came here.

“I am not a specialist in this domain but if you are curious enough you will have a lot of records from meetings and memoirs.

“What’s true is there has been no document adopted because nobody in the Soviet Union [at that time] thought they could trust the West…

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“There was a kind of gentlemen’s agreement but now that is not the case and that is why we are looking at ironclad, legal guarantees for our security.”

NATO’s own website attempts to debunk the claim that an expansion agreement was made and flat out says no agreement was ever reached.

They said NATO expansion “beyond a united Germany was not on the agenda in 1989, particularly as the Warsaw Pact still existed”.

They also say declassified White House transcripts showed how Bill Clinton refused Boris Yeltsin’s “gentlemen’s agreement” offer in 1997 that no former Soviet nation would join NATO.

NATO quotes an interview from Mikhail Gorbachev in 2014 who said: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years.

“I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn’t bring it up, either.”

Russia says it is beginning to pull back troops from the Ukraine border but Western forces say they are not convinced.

NATO is also sceptical about the Russian pullback with Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg sharing his thoughts with reporters.

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He said: “It remains to be seen whether there is a Russian withdrawal … What we see is that they have increased the number of troops, and more troops are on the way.”

Mr Stoltenberg is meeting with NATO defence ministers in Brussels as part of a two-day conference addressing the issue in Ukraine.

He reiterates that NATO “is not a threat to Russia” and said: “While we continue to work for the best, we must also be prepared for the worst.

“We will do what is necessary to protect and defend all allies.”

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