“Our actions will depend not on the course of negotiations, but on the unconditional guarantees of Russian national security. We made it clear that NATO's expansion to the east is unacceptable. The US is on our doorstep with its missiles. How would Americans react if we placed our missiles at the US border with Canada or Mexico?" he asked.
"It is not the course of the negotiations that is important, the result is important. 'Not a single inch to the East', they told us in the nineties. So what? They tricked us. There have been five waves of NATO expansion. Missile systems are appearing in Romania and Poland. Did we come to them? They came to us", the president stressed.
"In 1991, we divided our country, but this was not enough for our European partners. Even after the collapse of the USSR, we have 146 million people left, and this is too much [for them]. The Soviet Union did everything to build normal relations with the United States and the West, specialists from American services were present at our military weapons facilities, went there every day. US advisers and CIA personnel worked with the Russian government. What else did they want? Why did they support terrorist organisations in the Caucasus? What for? It was an attempt aimed at the further collapse [of Russia]", he stated.