# The NATO expansion promises

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "The NATO expansion promises," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-nato-expansion-promises/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's account of the assurances American presidents gave Russia that NATO would not expand to its borders or admit Ukraine — promises he says were made repeatedly, broken repeatedly, and, in his blunt formulation, never meant. He couples the account with an equally explicit statement that he opposes the Russian invasion of Ukraine.*

The NATO expansion promises are the assurances John Kiriakou says successive American presidents gave Russia and then broke, and which he treats as the proximate cause of the invasion of Ukraine — without treating them as its justification.

## The promises

Kiriakou is careful to say he does not mean the royal we: sitting presidents of the United States promised Vladimir Putin, on three separate occasions, that NATO would not extend to Russia's borders.[1] What happened, he says, is that NATO extended right to Russia's borders.[2]

The pattern then repeated with Ukraine. Washington promised Putin that Ukraine would never be a member of NATO, and then began talking about Ukrainian membership — at which point, in Kiriakou's account, Putin had had enough and launched the invasion.[2]

In another telling he names the presidents and sharpens the charge. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, he says, told the Russian government repeatedly that the United States would not support Ukrainian membership in NATO — and never meant it, lying to placate them.[3] Knowing that this was a Russian red line, Washington did it anyway.[3] He gives the Baltic states and Poland as the instances of the border promise being broken, and calls it disingenuous to then point at the Russians and attribute the whole thing to Russian imperialism.[3][4]

## The position he attaches to it

Kiriakou pairs the argument with an unambiguous statement of his own view, and says the pairing is not optional: if one is going to be a supporter of peace, one has to oppose all wars.[2] He is not saying he endorses or supports the Russian invasion of Ukraine — he calls it a terrible conflict — but he understands why the Russians launched it.[5]

He has described putting that position on the record at the moment of the invasion. On the day it began he said at the start of his radio show — which he notes is carried on a Russian government-owned network in Washington — that he unequivocally opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and urged Russian troops to leave Ukraine immediately, and that he equally strongly opposed United States and NATO intervention there.[6] He adds that the position has not made him popular either at work or among his friends, and that he also understands the United States to have been behind a soft coup in Ukraine in 2014.[7]

His minimum practical demand is that everybody should be sitting at the table and that a negotiated settlement should be attempted.[4] The shape he expects that settlement to take is set out in [his Ukraine settlement prediction](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ukraine-settlement-prediction).

## See also

- [Kiriakou's Ukraine settlement prediction](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/ukraine-settlement-prediction)
- [Major non-NATO ally status for Ukraine](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/major-non-nato-ally-proposal-for-ukraine)
- [Article 5, invoked once](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/nato-article-5-invoked-once)
- [Barack Obama](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/barack-obama)

## Sources

1. Ask Ex-CIA Agent and Whistleblower John Kiriakou Anything (2025-10-16), at 15:37. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddbc2c676&t=937s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-10-16-seymizzle-podcast-ask-ex-cia-agent-and-whistleblower-john-kiria/
2. Ask Ex-CIA Agent and Whistleblower John Kiriakou Anything (2025-10-16), at 16:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddbc2c676&t=968s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-10-16-seymizzle-podcast-ask-ex-cia-agent-and-whistleblower-john-kiria/
3. Ukraine War, Mass Surveillance, Trump, UFOs & CIA Torture Ta (2023-08-24), at 05:55. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMlLBUqjmTg&t=355s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-08-24-london-real-ukraine-war-mass-surveillance-trump-ufos-cia/
4. Ukraine War, Mass Surveillance, Trump, UFOs & CIA Torture Ta (2023-08-24), at 06:27. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMlLBUqjmTg&t=387s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-08-24-london-real-ukraine-war-mass-surveillance-trump-ufos-cia/
5. Ask Ex-CIA Agent and Whistleblower John Kiriakou Anything (2025-10-16), at 16:38. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auddbc2c676&t=998s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2025-10-16-seymizzle-podcast-ask-ex-cia-agent-and-whistleblower-john-kiria/
6. Ukraine War, Mass Surveillance, Trump, UFOs & CIA Torture Ta (2023-08-24), at 05:24. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMlLBUqjmTg&t=324s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-08-24-london-real-ukraine-war-mass-surveillance-trump-ufos-cia/
7. Ukraine War, Mass Surveillance, Trump, UFOs & CIA Torture Ta (2023-08-24), at 04:53. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMlLBUqjmTg&t=293s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2023-08-24-london-real-ukraine-war-mass-surveillance-trump-ufos-cia/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-nato-expansion-promises/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt