>> Even left-wing Guardian admits as much

I don't put much value into what the Guardian write on topics like these. Joining a major international organization is a huge undertaking that involves thousands of people from many institutions over many years. Countries that joined NATO or tried to (Ukraine, Georgia) have a long paper trail of adopted laws, policy documents, parliamentary discussions and other bureaucratic artifacts. Show me Russia's trail.

For example, here's Polish timeline:

* 31 March 1991. Warsaw Pact dissolved.
* 11 March 1992. NATO secretary general visits Poland and says that the door to NATO is open.
* 10 April 1992. Polish defense minister and chief of staff attend NATO Military Committee meeting for the first time.
* 1 September 1993. Polish president sends a letter to NATO stating that NATO membership was a top priority of Polish foreign policy.
* 10 January 1994. NATO summit in Brussels. NATO proposes partnership in exercises, peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.
* 12 January 1994. Polish president meets with Clinton in Prague and accepts the offer.
* 2 February 1994. Polish prime minister signs partnership framework at NATO HQ in Brussels.
* 12 September 1994. First joint exercises.
* 26 January 1996. NATO invites Poland to individual dialogue with NATO.
* 8 February 1996. Polish ministers of defense and foreign affairs send a latter to NATO accepting the invitation.
* 4 April 1996. Poland presents a vision for cooperation with NATO.
* 7 May 1996. The start of one-on-one meetings between NATO and Poland within the individual dialogue framework.
* 8 July 1997. NATO invites Poland into the organization.
* 16 September 1997. Offical accession talks begin.
* 14 November 1997. Polish foreign minister accepts the invitation.
* 16 December 1997. Polish foreign minister signs the official accession protocols.
* 28 December 1997. Polish ambassador attends a meeting of NATO's North Atlantic Council for the first time.
* 2 February 1998. Canada becomes the first NATO member to ratify Poland's accession protocols.
* 17 December 1998. Polish defense minister attends a meeting of NATO defense ministers for the first time.
* 29 January 1999. NATO secretary general sends a formal NATO invitation to Poland.
* 17 February 1999. Polish parliament ratifies the North Atlantic Treaty.
* 12 March 1999. Poland becomes NATO member and the official ceremony is held.

And this is only a very superficial overview. Every major step was preceded by tons of discussions, minutes from meetings, transcripts from debates. If you printed it all out, you'd need a dump truck to move all those documents.

What's Russia's timeline? What policy papers were adopted, what agreements signed towards becoming a NATO member?

>> That has been claimed often but proven wrong by the cable leaks.

NATO allegedly assured Soviet leadership in 1990 that NATO would not expand eastwards. Multiple Soviet participants of those meetings have denied that. When the hoax first appeared, Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze gave a lengthy interview, in which he not only denies those claims, but points out that they are anachronistic and don't fit the timeline of events. In 1990, Soviet leadership didn't forsee collapse of Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself. According to him, the possible NATO status of countries like Poland was never discussed, not with NATO, not within Warsaw Pact, not within the Communist Party circles in Moscow. That was totally out of the question and beyond comprehension, there was no need to seek any assurances.

Link to the interview: https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-e...

Before Eastern Europe started negotiating entry, NATO and Russia signed a treaty in which they agreed to respect the right of other countries to forge alliances how they prefer. That was in May 1997. Former Warsaw Pact countries were invited into NATO in July 1997 and official negotiations began in September.

So even if such assurance existed, Russia and NATO agreed in that 1997 to the opposite before any Warsaw Pact country started official negotiations with NATO.

>> This is just a generic ad-hominem. If you have substantial rebuttals, I'm eager to hear them.

There are many ways he manipulates facts into his narrative, but I'll give you one very clear and non-political example how he misleads his audience. He shows a map of Russian share in European gas consumption at 8:48 (https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?t=525) and says that Eastern Europe is heavily dependant on Russian gas. It shows countries like Finland at 100%. While it is true that all of Finland's gas comes from Russia, natural gas makes up only 2% of all fuels consumed in Finland. This is not by chance, but by official government policy, which keeps Russian gas consumption low in order not to give Russians a way to extort Finland as could happen if Finland depended on Russian gas to a great degree. Other countries in Eastern Europe have pursued the same policy and have low share of gas in overall consumption, even if all of it comes from Russia.

Or if you want another example, then at 6:10 (https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?t=370), Mearsheimer shows a map of Ukraine divided into red and yellow depicting Ukrainian and Russian language areas, saying how Ukraine is linguistically (and not only) "a badly divided country". That's extremely misleading. Ukraine is a bilingual country, where Ukrainian language is dominant in western part of the country and Russian language is in the eastern part, but there is no divide, because most people speak both languages and they inhabit a shared cultural space instead of living in parallel societies that don't mix due to language barriers. Here's a great map illustrating that, pay attention to vertical bars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map12_b.png Purple bars represent penetration of Ukrainian language and blue bars Russian language.

In regions like Kharkiv, only 10% of the population speaks only one language, evenly either only Russian or only Ukranian, so there's no reason to paint it as Russian. Out of 20 people, 18 speak both languages, 1 speaks only Ukranian, and 1 only Russian. Does this look like a "deep divide" to you?