NATO and the eastern flank — Russia and the NATO eastern flank

Summary

NATO spent three decades attempting a partnership with Russia, through the 1997 NATO–Russia Founding Act and the NATO–Russia Council established in 2002. In response to Russia's actions against Ukraine, including the annexation of Crimea, NATO suspended all practical civilian and military cooperation in April 2014 while keeping open channels of political and military communication. After the full-scale invasion of February 2022 NATO states that relations are at their lowest point since the Cold War, that it can no longer consider Russia a partner, and that the Russian Federation is the most significant and direct threat to Allies' security. It also states that it remains willing to maintain channels with Moscow to mitigate risk and prevent escalation, that it does not seek confrontation, and that it poses no threat to Russia. All of those are NATO's own formulations and are recorded as such.

Why it matters

This is the relationship the eastern flank exists to answer, and its shape is more specific than "hostility". What NATO has done is stop cooperating while declining to dismantle the forums, which leaves a structure that could be reactivated without anything new being signed. For a reader that matters in both directions: the absence of meetings is not the absence of instruments, and the survival of the instruments is not evidence of a working relationship.

Agreements

• NATO–Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security · signed 1997-05-27

  Not abrogated. NATO describes the partnership it framed as one it can no longer have; the Act itself has not been terminated by either party, and this record does not state that it has.

• NATO–Russia Council · signed 2002-05-28

  A forum for consultation and cooperation, established at Rome. Practical cooperation through it was suspended in April 2014. Recorded as an instrument that exists and does not operate.

What remains unknown

• Whether either party regards the Founding Act as still binding in substance is not stated by the source read, and is not resolved here.
• Russia's own characterisation of the relationship is not carried on this record. It belongs on the Russia actor record, where it is recorded as a position stated by the government concerned rather than as a fact.