>Washington D.C., December 12, 2017 – U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University
That assurance is a fake peddled by Russian propaganda, which goes completely against NATO's open door policy. Around 2000-2003 Russia was in talks about joining NATO ourselves; clearly, no regard to that "assurance" was given.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...