information:highlighting, structural:expansion
Relations with NATO

The US Department of State seemed to confuse Yeltsin over German re-unification and dismemberment of the Helsinki Final Act and ensuing Partnership for Peace (PfP) push for NATO expansion. There is some question as to the involvement of his Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Kozyrev, who in August 1993 was painted by Lech Wałęsa as a saboteur of Polish aspirations for NATO membership but was regarded by domestic opponents as suborned by the United States. In Yeltsin's letter to Bill Clinton dated 15 September 1993 he strongly favored "a pan-European security system" instead of NATO and warned:

Not only the opposition, but moderate circles as well, would no doubt perceive this as a sort of neo-isolation of our country in diametric opposition to its natural admission into Euro-Atlantic space.

After his August visit to Warsaw, Yeltsin saw the explosion of fright over NATO in the old guard and thereafter the window of détente slammed shut. By December 1994, the month in which the Budapest Memorandum was signed, Clinton began to understand that Russia had concluded he was "subordinating, if not abandoning, integration to NATO expansion". In July 1995, by which time the Russians had signed up to PfP, Yeltsin said to Clinton, "we must stick to our position, which is that there should be no rapid expansion of NATO.. it’s important that the OSCE be the principal mechanism for developing a new security order in Europe. NATO is a factor, too, of course, but NATO should evolve into a political organization."