NATO has allegedly deceived and disrespected Russia by expanding into Eastern Europe, threatening Moscow's interests. That, at least, is how the Kremlin has justified its war in Ukraine. But is there any truth to it?

What fact-checkers found (1)

• dw.comNATO leaders have gathered in The Hague in the Netherlands on June 24 and 25 to discuss the topic of increased defense spending, and support for Ukraine will be high on the the agenda. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is now well into its fourth year. As the fighting drags on, the United States has increasingly demanded that its NATO allies shoulder a greater share of the costs of funding the alliance, whose members have been providing significant military and financial support to Kyiv. In the past four years, NATO has been a target of false narratives time and again. DW Fact Check looked at some of the most common claims. However, for the Russian President Vladimir Putin, NATO itself represents a threat to Russian national security — especially since its post-Cold War expansion into Eastern Europe, which includes countries that had formerly been part of the Soviet Union or at least in the Soviet sphere of influence. The prospect of Ukraine, a country with even stronger historical and cultural ties to Russia, drawing closer to or even joining NATO — or indeed the European Union — has been cited by Putin as justification for Russian interference in Ukraine since 2014 and the so-called "special military operation" launched in February 2022. As early as March 2000, speaking to the BBC in one of his first interviews as Russian president, Putin insisted that he was not opposed to NATO but stressed concerns about the alliance's eastward expansion, which by that point had already seen Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic join as members.

  2025-06-25

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