"Not one inch eastward." That's what James Baker told Gorbachev in February 1990 — and it was never written into a single treaty. This week I did something you don't hear on the news: I read the actual documents. Article 5. Article 10. The Budapest Memorandum. The 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. Then I walked the 35 years that got us from the fall of the Soviet Union to the meat grinder in the Donbas — and to this week's headlines out of Germany, Moscow, and Leipzig.
What you'll hear:
• David reads Article 5 and Article 10 out loud and explains why they matter more than any pundit's opinion
• Why Ukraine gave up the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal for "assurances" — and why that one word was chosen on purpose
• The 1997 promise NATO made to Russia, and the expansion that came 22 months later
• Tuzla Island, 2003: the armed standoff David believes is where the Ukraine clock really starts
• What Putin took from the Orange Revolution, and what Bucharest 2008 set in motion
• David's read on the AfD's 44% in Saxony-Anhalt, Witkoff and Kushner in Moscow and Kyiv, and the low end of where this goes next
This is not a defense of Putin. It's the context you need before you decide what America should do.
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