Izgleda da je najzad i formalno razrešeno pitanje da li "usmena" obećanja NATO-a Rusiji da se neće širiti na istok imaju pravnu težinu u međunarodnom pravu (jer i nisu bila samo usmena, ali čak i da su bila). Odgovor je imaju, isto kao i pisani dokumenti. A plus toga kasnije su potpisani i pisani dokumenti koje su NATO i Zapad prekršili. Rusija se poziva na to kao na jednu od više validnih pravnih osnova za svoju vojnu intervenciju u Ukrajini :
"And he (Lavrov) then continues by saying that all of this of course violates the charter, the UN charter. And then he goes on and discusses the root causes (Ukrajinskog sukoba). And he says one such root cause lies in Russia's security concerns. These arise from the decadesl long systematic violation of commitments made to us against NATO's eastward expansion. President Putin has repeatedly acknowledged that subsequently subsequent to these asurances, the alliance underwent five waves of expansion.
To suggest that these were merely verbal promises is categorically false.
Now on this topic I should say that
Pascal Lottaz at Neutrality Studies has undertaken a extraordinary amount of
research on this topic and he's pointed out that in the early 1970s the International Court of Justice looked at this whole topic of verbal asurances and whether they have any carry any weight under international law and he
discovered a decision of the International Court of Justice from the early 1970s, an actual case. So this is substantive law which says quite clearly that verbal assurances of the kind that NATO made, that the western powers made, at the end of the cold war not to expand NATO eastwards, that
those sort of verbal asurances carry exactly the same weight in international law as written asurances do, and that is a decision of the international court of justice. It seems to me that
this actually settles this topic conclusively and you do not in fact need something in writing to make the kind of assurance that the Russians were repeatedly given to, you don't need to formalize it in a written document to make it binding in international law terms. As I said Pascal Lottaz and his team have researched this and I have no reason to disagree with their conclusions which seem to me entirely wellfounded and absolutely spot on.
But Lavrov then goes on to say this.
These asurances were formalized in writing through political declarations signed at the highest level
during the OCE summits in Istanbul in 1999 and Astana 2010 which explicitly state that
security is indivisible and no one may strengthen their own security at the expense of others. NATO did precisely that.
No state or organization has the right to assert dominance over the OCE space. Yet they acted in direct contravention. To claim otherwise is mandacious, not least because verbal promise carries weight.
And crucially, that's the point that Pascal Lottaz makes and crucially there exists not only document evidence of these facts but also highest level signed documents."