Meeting between NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner and Russian President Boris Yeltsin at the Chateau du Stuyvenbergh, December 9, 1993. From left, Russian Foreign Minister Andrey Kozyrev, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, Yeltsin, and Woerner.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University

April 8, 2024

New evidence on the high hopes of 1992-1995

Documents include transcripts of NATO secretary general with Russian parliament leaders,
U.S. defense secretary with high-level Duma delegation, and
reports on Russian defense minister at joint U.S.-Russian exercises

Washington, D.C., April 4, 2024 – Top NATO and U.S. officials worked out cooperative agreements with senior Russian leaders including the defense minister of the newly independent Russian Federation during three years of high-level dialogue and hands-on engagement from 1992 to 1995, according to previously secret Russian and American documents published today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Marking the 75th anniversary of the signing of the NATO Treaty in April 1949, the new publication illuminates the all-too-brief period of close U.S., NATO, and Russian security cooperation in the 1990s, which dramatically reduced nuclear arms and risks, addressed peacekeeping challenges in the Balkans, and held out hope of Russia’s eventual integration into Europe and partnership with NATO.

The documents describe joint U.S.-Russian peacekeeping exercises at Fort Riley, Kansas, breakthrough understandings on treaty negotiations, and meetings of the minds on the future security of Europe with leaders of the Russian Supreme Soviet and its successor, the Duma. In the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine, the new evidence highlights the tragedy of roads not taken and hopes unfulfilled.

The documents include the Russian transcript, published for the first time, of NATO Secretary General Manfred Woerner’s lengthy conversation in Moscow with Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov in February 1992, where Woerner outlines the NATO vision of Europe as “a new security environment from [the Urals] to the Atlantic … built on three pillars”: the Helsinki process, the European economic community, and NATO – a view very close to Russia’s own.

Khasbulatov had stood on the tank with Boris Yeltsin in defiance of the August 1991 hardliners coup against democratic reforms in the Soviet Union and worked with Yeltsin to dissolve the USSR in December 1991. The Supreme Soviet leader was still a year or more away from his own political confrontation with Yeltsin, a power struggle that would end terribly with Yeltsin shelling his parliament. But these Russians did not believe they had lost the Cold War; rather, they saw themselves as victorious over the Communist system and as the leaders of a superpower deserving of mutual respect from the West and on its way toward European integration.

The documents also include U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry’s dramatic SECRET/EYES ONLY memo to President Clinton recounting his three days with Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev in October 1995. Perry said the first seven hours at the Pentagon were “quite tense” but that the visit to Fort Riley to observe joint U.S.-Russian peacekeeping exercises was a “smashing success,” leading to agreement on a joint force for Bosnia reconstruction, followed by Grachev and Perry together pressing the “dual key!” that blew up a U.S. Minuteman silo at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

There would be other short-lived periods of NATO-Russian cooperation, most notably after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., when the Russian Federation facilitated the transit and supply of U.S. and NATO troops across Russia and Central Asia into Afghanistan in pursuit of al Qaeda. A highlight came in May 2002 with the convening of the NATO-Russian Council in Brussels. This period of cooperation and the reasons it ended remain to be documented. Watch for future postings on the subject from the National Security Archive.

Continue reading at The National Security Archive and read the now public documents…

And you’ll understand better how much Russia was cheated and why we are in such a dangerous, tragic situation a good 30 years later.

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