"A hammer without a nail
"Amid intense political and economic instability in Russia during the 1990s,
opposing the Western alliance was one of the few issues that united the country's fractious political spectrum, according to declassified documents maintained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
"'
We believe that the eastward expansion of NATO is a mistake and a serious one at that,' Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first post-Soviet president, told reporters at a 1997 news conference with US President Bill Clinton in Helsinki, where the two signed a statement on arms control.
"Indeed, documents show a pattern of promises US negotiators made to their Russian counterparts as well as internal policy discussions opposing NATO expansion to Eastern Europe."