You are pressing Russian propaganda. Even IF there were comments made to the head of the USSR- that promise is irrelevant to Russia.

NATO didn't actively initiate eastward expansion! Why is it Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia ASKED to join? They were former soviet republics.

What about the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Albania, Poland Bulgaria? Former Iron Curtain captives of the USSR? Or the former regions of Yugoslavia- Macedonia, Montenegro.

Or the fact that the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed formerly neutral Finland and Sweden to join.

Maybe they know something you don't. NATO is a defensive organization- not a 'sword."

Ukrainians rejected affiliation with petro-criminal-oligarchy of Putin's Russia. They want to be part of a prosperous west which validates Friedman's comments!

To claim that Yugoslavia was dismembered by the west and NATO. Like the USSR, Yugoslavia was a made up nation of other smaller "republics" kept together by Tito's strongman appraoch. The Serbs created the environment for the break up by pushing a Serbian nationalism to create a "greater Serbia." The fact that Serbia committed war crimes in the attempt to control the minority neighbors proves their reasons for resisting and being independent.