title: Russia–NATO relations

text: There was no provision granting NATO or Russia any veto powers over the actions of the other. NATO said it had no plans to station nuclear weapons in the new member states or send in new permanent military forces. The parties stated they did not see each other as adversaries, and, "based on an enduring political commitment undertaken at the highest political level, will build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security".As part of the efforts of the PJC, the NATO-Russia Glossary of Contemporary Political and Military Terms was created in 2001. The glossary was the first of several such publications on topics such as missile defense, demilitarization, and countering illicit drugs to encourage transparency in NATO-Russia Relations, foster mutual understanding, and facilitate communication between NATO and Russia contingents. The Glossary of Contemporary Political and Military Terms was especially timely given the NATO and Russia cooperative efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The NATO-Russia Council (NRC) was created on 28 May 2002 during the 2002 NATO Summit in Rome. The NRC was designed to replace the PJC as the official diplomatic tool for handling security issues and joint projects between NATO and Russia. The structure of the NRC provided that the individual member states and Russia were each equal partners and would meet in areas of common interest, instead of the bilateral format (NATO + 1) established under the PJC.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In the same year, the Budapest Memorandum was signed where Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States made security assurances to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, in return for handing over by these three countries of their post-Soviet nuclear arsenal.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In 1999, Russia condemned the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Russian President Boris Yeltsin said that NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia "has trampled upon the foundations of international law and the United Nations charter." The Kosovo War ended on 11 June 1999, and a joint NATO-Russian peacekeeping force was to be installed in Kosovo. Russia had expected to receive a peacekeeping sector independent of NATO, and was angered when this was refused. There was concern that a separate Russian sector might lead to a partition of Kosovo between a Serb-controlled north and Albanian south. From 12 to 26 June 1999, there was a brief but tense stand-off between NATO and the Russian Kosovo Force in which Russian troops occupied the Pristina International Airport.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The Russia–NATO relations stalled and subsequently started to deteriorate, following the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004–2005.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In the years 2004–2006, Russia undertook several hostile trade actions directed against Ukraine and the Western countries ("see #Trade and economy below"). Several highly publicised murders of Putin's opponents also occurred in Russia in that period, marking his increasingly authoritarian rule and the tightening of his grip on the media ("see #Ideology and propaganda below"). Subsequently, Russia suspended in 2007 its participation in the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In 2008, Russia condemned the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo, stating they "expect the UN mission and NATO-led forces in Kosovo to take immediate action to carry out their mandate ... including the annulling of the decisions of Pristina's self-governing organs and the taking of tough administrative measures against them." Russian President Vladimir Putin described the recognition of Kosovo's independence by several major world powers as "a terrible precedent, which will de facto blow apart the whole system of international relations, developed not over decades, but over centuries", and that "they have not thought through the results of what they are doing. At the end of the day it is a two-ended stick and the second end will come back and hit them in the face". Europe was not unanimous in this matter, and a number of European countries have refused to recognise the sovereignity of Kosovo, while a number of further European nations did so only to appease the United States.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Nevertheless, the heads of state for NATO Allies and Russia gave a positive assessment of NATO-Russia Council achievements in a Bucharest summit meeting in April 2008, though both sides have expressed mild discontent with the lack of actual content resulting from the council.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In early 2008, U.S. President George W. Bush vowed full support for admitting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, to the opposition of Russia. The Russian Government claimed plans to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia may negatively affect European security. Likewise, Russians are mostly strongly opposed to any eastward expansion of NATO. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev stated in 2008 that "no country would be happy about a military bloc to which it did not belong approaching its borders". Disregarding openly the Ukraininian sovereignity, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin warned that any incorporation of Ukraine into NATO would cause a "deep crisis" in Russia–Ukraine relations and also negatively affect Russia's relations with the West.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Relations between Russia and NATO soured in summer 2008 due to Russia's war with Georgia. Later the North Atlantic Council condemned Russia for recognizing the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia as independent states. The Secretary General of NATO claimed that Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia violated numerous UN Security Council resolutions, including resolutions endorsed by Russia. Russia, in turn, insisted the recognition was taken basing on the situation on the ground, and was in line with the UN Charter, the CSCE Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and other fundamental international law; Russian media heavily stressed the precedent of the recent Kosovo declaration of independence.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In January 2009, the Russian envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin said the NATO-Russia council was "a body where scholastic discussions were held." A US official shared this view, stating: "We want now to structure cooperation more practically, in areas where you can achieve results, instead of insisting on things that won't happen."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Relations were further strained in May 2009 when NATO expelled two Russia diplomats over accusations of espionage. It has also added to the tension already created by proposed NATO military exercises in Georgia, as the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said,


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The planned NATO exercises in Georgia, no matter how one tries to convince us otherwise, are an overt provocation. One cannot carry out exercises in a place where there was just a war.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In September 2009, Russian Government said that a US proposed missile defence system in Poland and in the Czech Republic could threaten its own defences. The Russian Space Forces commander, Colonel General Vladimir Popovkin stated in 2007 that "[the] trajectories of Iranian or North Korean missiles would hardly pass anywhere near the territory of the Czech republic, but every possible launch of Russian ICBM from the territory of the European Russia, or made by Russian Northern Fleet would be controlled by the [radar] station". However, later in 2009, Barack Obama cancelled the missile defence project in Poland and Czech Republic after Russia threatened the US with military response, and warned Poland that by agreeing to NATO's anti-missile system, it was exposing itself to a strike or nuclear attack from Russia.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In December 2009, NATO approached Russia for help in Afghanistan, requesting permission for the alliance to fly cargo (including possibly military ones) over Russian territory to Afghanistan, and to provide more helicopters for the Afghan armed forces. However Russia only allowed transit of non-military supplies through its territory.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Before the Russian Parliamentary elections in 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev was also quoted as saying that had Russia not joined the 2008 South Ossetia war, NATO would have expanded further eastward.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 6 June 2011, NATO and Russia participated in their first ever joint fighter jet exercise, dubbed "Vigilant Skies 2011". Since the Cold War, this is only the second joint military venture between the alliance and Russia, with the first being a joint submarine exercise which begun on 30 May 2011.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The 2011 military intervention in Libya prompted a widespread wave of criticism from several world leaders, including Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who said that "<nowiki>[</nowiki>UNSC Resolution 1973<nowiki>]</nowiki> is defective and flawed...It allows everything. It resembles medieval calls for crusades."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In April 2012, there were some protests in Russia over their country's involvement with NATO, conducted by the leftist activist alliance Left Front.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Beginning in 2014, Russia engaged in further hostile threats or actions against Ukraine (2014–present); Syria (2015–present), and Turkey (2015–2016), among others.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In early March 2014, tensions increased between NATO and Russia as a result of Russia's move to annex Crimea: NATO urged Russia to stop its actions and said it supported Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. On 1 April 2014, NATO issued a statement by NATO foreign ministers that announced it had "decided to suspend all practical civilian and military cooperation between NATO and Russia. Our political dialogue in the NATO-Russia Council can continue, as necessary, at the Ambassadorial level and above, to allow us to exchange views, first and foremost on this crisis". The statement condemned Russia's "illegal military intervention in Ukraine and Russia's violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity". Russia used Kosovo's declaration of independence as a justification for recognizing the independence of Crimea, citing the so-called "Kosovo independence precedent".


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 25 March 2014, Jens Stoltenberg gave a speech to a Norwegian Labour Party convention where he harshly criticized Russia over its invasion of Crimea, stating that Russia threatened security and stability in Europe and violated international law, and calling Russia's actions unacceptable.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: After his election as NATO Secretary-General, Stoltenberg emphasized that Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a "brutal reminder of the necessity of NATO," stating that Russia's actions in Ukraine represented "the first time since the Second World War that a country has annexed a territory belonging to another country." Stoltenberg has highlighted the necessity of NATO having a sufficiently strong military capacity, including nuclear weapons, to deter Russia from violating international law and threaten the security of NATO's member states. He has highlighted the importance of Article 5 in the North Atlantic Treaty and NATO's responsibility to defend the security of its eastern members in particular. He has further stated that Russia needs to be sanctioned over its actions in Ukraine, and has said that a possible NATO membership of Ukraine will be "a very important question" in the near future. Stoltenberg has expressed concern over Russia acquiring new cruise missiles.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: At the NATO Wales summit in early September, the NATO-Ukraine Commission adopted a Joint Statement that "strongly condemned Russia's illegal and illegitimate self-declared "annexation" of Crimea and its continued and deliberate destabilization of eastern Ukraine in violation of international law"; this position was re-affirmed in the early December statement by the same body.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: A report released in November highlighted the fact that close military encounters between Russia and the West (mainly NATO countries) had jumped to Cold War levels, with 40 dangerous or sensitive incidents recorded in the eight months alone, including a near-collision between a Russian reconnaissance plane and a passenger plane taking off from Denmark in March with 132 passengers on board. An unprecedented increase in Russian air force and naval activity in the Baltic region prompted NATO to step up its longstanding rotation of military jets in Lithuania. Similar Russian air force increased activity in the Asia-Pacific region that relied on the resumed use of the previously abandoned Soviet military base at Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam. In March 2015, Russia's defense minister Sergey Shoygu said that Russia's long-range bombers would continue patrolling various parts of the world and expand into other regions.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In July, the U.S. formally accused Russia of having violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by testing a prohibited medium-range ground-launched cruise missile (presumably R-500, a modification of Iskander) and threatened to retaliate accordingly. In early June 2015, the U.S. State Department reported that Russia had failed to correct the violation of the I.N.F. Treaty; the U.S. government was said to have made no discernible headway in making Russia so much as acknowledge the compliance problem.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The US government's October 2014 report claimed that Russia had 1,643 nuclear warheads ready to launch (an increase from 1,537 in 2011) – one more than the US, thus overtaking the US for the first time since 2000; both countries' deployed capacity being in violation of the 2010 New START treaty that sets a cap of 1,550 nuclear warheads. Likewise, even before 2014, the US had set about implementing a large-scale program, worth up to a trillion dollars, aimed at overall revitalization of its atomic energy industry, which includes plans for a new generation of weapon carriers and construction of such sites as the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility in Los Alamos, New Mexico and the National Security Campus in south Kansas City.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: At the end of 2014, Putin approved a revised national military doctrine, which listed NATO's military buildup near the Russian borders as the top military threat.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 2 December 2014, NATO foreign ministers announced an interim Spearhead Force (the 'Very High Readiness Joint Task Force') created pursuant to the Readiness Action Plan agreed on at the NATO Wales summit in early September 2014 and meant to enhance NATO presence in the eastern part of the alliance. In June 2015, in the course of military drills held in Poland, NATO tested the new rapid reaction force for the first time, with more than 2,000 troops from nine states taking part in the exercise.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Stoltenberg has called for more cooperation with Russia in the fight against terrorism following the deadly January 2015 attack on the headquarters of a French satirical weekly magazine "Charlie Hebdo" in Paris.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In early February 2015, NATO diplomats said that concern was growing in NATO over Russia's nuclear strategy and indications that Russia's nuclear strategy appeared to point to a lowering of the threshold for using nuclear weapons in any conflict. The conclusion was followed by British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon saying that Britain must update its nuclear arsenal in response to Russian modernization of its nuclear forces. Later in February, Fallon said that Putin could repeat tactics used in Ukraine in Baltic members of the NATO alliance; he also said: "NATO has to be ready for any kind of aggression from Russia, whatever form it takes. NATO is getting ready." Fallon noted that it was not a new Cold War with Russia, as the situation was already "pretty warm".


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In March 2015, Russia, citing NATO's "de facto" breach of the 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, said that the suspension of its participation in it, announced in 2007, was now "complete" through halting its participation in the consulting group on the Treaty.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In spring, the Russian Defense Ministry announced it was planning to deploy additional forces in Crimea as part of beefing up its Black Sea Fleet, including re-deployment by 2016 of nuclear-capable Tupolev Tu-22M3 ('Backfire') long-range strike bombers—which used to be the backbone of Soviet naval strike units during the Cold War, but were later withdrawn from bases in Crimea. Early April 2015 saw the publication of the leaked information ascribed to semi-official sources within the Russian military and intelligence establishment, about Russia's alleged preparedness for a nuclear response to certain inimical non-nuclear acts on the part of NATO; such implied threats were interpreted as "an attempt to create strategic uncertainty" and undermine Western political cohesion. Also in this vein, Norway's defense minister, Ine Eriksen Søreide, noted that Russia had "created uncertainty about its intentions".


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In June 2015, an independent Russian military analyst was quoted by a major American newspaper as saying: "Everybody should understand that we are living in a totally different world than two years ago. In that world, which we lost, it was possible to organize your security with treaties, with mutual-trust measures. Now we have come to an absolutely different situation, where the general way to ensure your security is military deterrence."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 16 June 2015, Tass quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksey Meshkov as saying that "none of the Russia-NATO programs that used to be at work are functioning at a working level."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In late June 2015, while on a trip to Estonia, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said the US would deploy heavy weapons, including tanks, armoured vehicles and artillery, in Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. The move was interpreted by Western commentators as marking the beginning of a reorientation of NATO's strategy. It was called by a senior Russian Defence Ministry official "the most aggressive act by Washington since the Cold War" and criticised by the Russian Foreign Ministry as "inadequate in military terms" and "an obvious return by the United States and its allies to the schemes of 'the Cold War'".


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On its part, the U.S. expressed concern over Putin's announcement of plans to add over 40 new ballistic missiles to Russia's nuclear weapons arsenal in 2015. American observers and analysts, such as Steven Pifer, noting that the U.S. had no reason for alarm about the new missiles, provided that Russia remained within the limits of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), viewed the ratcheting-up of nuclear saber-rattling by Russia's leadership as mainly bluff and bluster designed to conceal Russia's weaknesses; however, Pifer suggested that the most alarming motivation behind this rhetoric could be Putin seeing nuclear weapons not merely as tools of deterrence, but as tools of coercion.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Meanwhile, at the end of June 2015, it was reported that the production schedule for a new Russian MIRV-equipped, super-heavy thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missile "Sarmat", intended to replace the obsolete Soviet-era SS-18 "Satan" missiles, was slipping. Also noted by commentators were the inevitable financial and technological constraints that would hamper any real arms race with the West, if such course were to be embarked on by Russia.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Under the Stoltenberg leadership, NATO took a radically new position on propaganda and counter-propaganda in 2015, that "Entirely legal activities, such as running a pro-Moscow TV station, could become a broader assault on a country that would require a NATO response under Article Five of the Treaty... A final strategy is expected in October 2015." In another report, the journalist reported that "as part of the hardened stance, Britain has committed £750,000 of UK money to support a counter-propaganda unit at NATO's headquarters in Brussels."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In November NATO's top military commander US General Philip Breedlove said that the alliance was "watching for indications" amid fears over the possibility that Russia could move any of its nuclear arsenal to the peninsula.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: NATO-Russia tensions rose further after, on 24 November 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane that allegedly violated Turkish airspace while on a mission in northwestern Syria. Russian officials denied that the plane had entered Turkish airspace. Shortly after the incident, NATO called an emergency meeting to discuss the matter. Stoltenberg said "We stand in solidarity with Turkey and support the territorial integrity of our NATO ally" after Turkey shot down a Russian military jet for allegedly violating Turkish airspace for 17 seconds, near the Syrian border.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 2 December 2015, NATO member states formally invited Montenegro to join the alliance, which drew a response from Russia that it would suspend cooperation with that country.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In December, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said re-deployment of nuclear-capable Tupolev Tu-22M3 ('Backfire') long-range strike bombers to Crimea would be a legitimate action as "Crimea has now become part of a country that has such weapons under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Shortly before a meeting of the Russia–NATO Council at the level of permanent representatives on 20 April, the first such meeting since June 2014, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov cited what he saw as "an unprecedented military buildup since the end of the Cold War and the presence of NATO on the so-called eastern flank of the alliance with the goal of exerting military and political pressure on Russia for containing it", and said "Russia does not plan and will not be drawn into a senseless confrontation and is convinced that there is no reasonaqble alternative to mutually beneficial all-European cooperation in security sphere based on the principle of indivisibility of security relying on the international law." Russia has also warned against moving defensive missiles to Turkey's border with Syria.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: After the meeting, the Russian ambassador to NATO said Russia was feeling comfortable without having co-operative relations with the alliance; he noted that at the time Russia and NATO had no positive agenda to pursue. The NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said: "NATO and Russia have profound and persistent disagreements. Today's meeting did not change that."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The opening of the first site of the NATO missile defence system in Deveselu, Romania, in May 2016 led Russia to reiterate its position that the U.S.-built system undermined Russia's security, posed "direct threat to global and regional security", was in violation of the INF, and that measures were "being taken to ensure the necessary level of security for Russia".


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: A June 2016 Levada poll found that 68% of Russians think that deploying NATO troops in the former Eastern bloc countries bordering Russia is a threat to Russia.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The NATO summit held in Warsaw in July 2016 approved the plan to move four battalions totaling 3,000 to 4,000 troops on a rotating basis by early 2017 into the Baltic states and eastern Poland and increase air and sea patrols to reassure allies who were once part of the Soviet bloc. The adopted Communique explained that the decision was meant "to unambiguously demonstrate, as part of our overall posture, Allies' solidarity, determination, and ability to act by triggering an immediate Allied response to any aggression." The summit reaffirmed NATO's previously taken decision to "suspend all practical civilian and military cooperation between NATO and Russia, while remaining open to political dialogue with Russia".


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Heads of State and Government "condemned Russia's ongoing and wide-ranging military build-up" in Crimea and expressed concern over "Russia's efforts and stated plans for further military build-up in the Black Sea region". They also stated that Russia's "significant military presence and support for the regime in Syria", and its military build-up in the Eastern Mediterranean "posed further risks and challenges for the security of Allies and others". NATO leaders agreed to step up support for Ukraine: in a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission, the Allied leaders reviewed the security situation with president of Ukraine Poroshenko, welcomed the government's plans for reform, and endorsed a Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine aimed to "help make Ukraine's defence and security institutions more effective, efficient and accountable".


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: At the meeting of the Russia–NATO Council at the level of permanent representatives that was held shortly after the Warsaw summit, Russia admonished NATO against intensifying its military activity in the Black Sea. Russia also said it agreed to have its military aircraft pilots flying over the Baltic region turn on the cockpit transmitters, known as transponders, if NATO planes acted likewise.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Mid-July 2016, Russia's military announced that a regiment of long-range surface-to-air S-400 weapon system would be deployed in the city of Feodosia in Crimea in August that year, beefing up Russia's anti-access/area denial capabilities around the peninsula.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In July 2017, the NATO-Russia Council met in Brussels. Following the meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Allies and Russia had had a "frank and constructive discussion" on Ukraine, Afghanistan, and transparency and risk reduction. The two sides briefed each other on the upcoming Russia's/Belarus′ Zapad 2017 exercise, and NATO's Exercise Trident Javelin 2017, respectively.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: At the end of August 2017, NATO declared that NATO's four multinational battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland were fully operational, a move that was implemented pursuant to the decision taken at the 2016 Warsaw summit.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In 2017, UK Secretary of State for Defence Michael Fallon warned that Russia's Zapad 2017 exercise in Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast was "designed to provoke us". Fallon falsely claimed that the number of Russian troops taking part in exercise could reach 100,000.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In February 2018, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stated: "We don't see any threat [from Russia] against any NATO ally and therefore, I'm always careful speculating too much about hypothetical situations." Stoltenberg welcomed the 2018 Russia–United States summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland. He said NATO is not trying to isolate Russia.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In response to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal on 4 March 2018, Stoltenberg announced on 27 March 2018 that NATO would be expelling seven Russian diplomats from the Russian mission to NATO in Brussels. In addition, 3 unfilled positions at the mission were denied accreditation from NATO. Russia blamed the US for the NATO response.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In April 2019, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg warned a joint session of the U.S. Congress of the threat posed by "a more assertive" Russia to the alliances members, which included a massive military buildup, threats to sovereign states, the use of nerve agents and cyberattacks.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In September 2019, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that "NATO approaching our borders is a threat to Russia." He was quoted as saying that if NATO accepts Georgian membership with the article on collective defense covering only Tbilisi-administered territory (i.e., excluding the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are currently unrecognized breakaway republics supported by Russia), "we will not start a war, but such conduct will undermine our relations with NATO and with countries who are eager to enter the alliance."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 13 April 2021, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia to halt its buildup of forces near the border with Ukraine. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said that Russia has deployed troops to its western borders for "combat training exercises" in response to NATO "military activities that threaten Russia." Defender-Europe 21, one of the largest NATO-led military exercises in Europe in decades, began in mid-March 2021 and will last until June 2021. It will include "nearly simultaneous operations across more than 30 training areas" in Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania and other countries.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 6 October 2021, NATO decided to expel eight Russian diplomats, described as “undeclared intelligence officers”, and halve the size of Russia's mission to the alliance in response to suspected malign activities.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The eight diplomats are expected to leave Brussels, where the alliance is headquartered, by the end of October and their positions scrapped. Two other positions that are currently vacant will also be abolished. This will reduce the size of the Russian mission to NATO in the Belgian capital to 10.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In November 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that an expansion of NATO's presence in Ukraine, especially the deployment of any long-range missiles capable of striking Russian cities or missile defence systems similar to those in Romania and Poland, would be a "red line" issue for Russia. Putin asked U.S. President Joe Biden for legal guarantees that NATO wouldn't expand eastward or put "weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory." NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg replied that "It's only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when Ukraine is ready to join NATO. Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence to try to control their neighbors."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The prelude to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine occurred with Russia demanding that NATO end all military activity in Eastern Europe and never admit Ukraine as a member, and also stated they wanted a legal guarantee to end further eastward expansion and a Russian veto on NATO membership of Ukraine, in spite of its sovereignity. A senior Biden administration official later stated that the U.S. is "prepared to discuss Russia's proposals" with its NATO allies, but also stated that "there are some things in those documents that the Russians know will be unacceptable."


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 12 January 2022, the NATO-Russia Council met at NATO's HQ in Brussels to discuss Russia's military build-up near its border with Ukraine and Russia's demands for security guarantees in Europe. The respective delegations were led by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Wendy Sherman and NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Grushko and Russian Deputy Defence Minister, Colonel General Alexander Fomin.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Despite Russia's announcement on Wednesday, 16 February 2022, that military training in Moscow-annexed Crimea had stopped and soldiers were returning to their posts, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said it appeared that Russia was continuing its military build-up.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 24 February 2022, in the middle of an ongoing meeting of the United Nations Security Council which was summoned to discuss the crisis and was presided over by Russia at the time, Putin ordered the Russian army to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, causing the largest conventional military aggression on a European state since World War II, eliciting one of the most tense moments between NATO and Russia ever. NATO Response Force was activated and put on high alert, with NATO deploying a number of troops in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 16 May 2022, which is one day after Sweden and Finland applied for membership in NATO, during a summit of the CSTO, which is the NATO's counterpart, Vladimir Putin said:


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The 2022 NATO Madrid summit declared Russia "a direct threat" to Euro-Atlantic security and approved the increasing NATO Response Force to 300,000 troops.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 9 September 2022, council members from Smolninsky District Council in St. Petersburg passed a resolution which called on the State Duma to impeach Russian President Vladimir Putin for "high treason" due to his handling of the war in Ukraine. Subsequently, these council members were arrested by police. Dmitry Palyuga, a councillor, published a resolution on Twitter which accuses President Putin, among other things, of NATO's expansion eastward, including adding Finland and Sweden to "double" its border with Russia. Likewise, a similar resolution was debated and passed by Moscow’s Lomonosovsky District Council.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The Russia–NATO Council was established in 2002 for handling security issues and joint projects. Cooperation between Russia and NATO focused on several main sectors: terrorism, military cooperation, Afghanistan (including transportation by Russia of non-military International Security Assistance Force freight (see NATO logistics in the Afghan War), and fighting local drug production), industrial cooperation, and weapons non-proliferation.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: As a result of its structured working groups across a range of areas, the NRC served as the primary forum for consensus-building, cooperation, and consultation on topics such as terrorism, proliferation, peacekeeping, airspace management, and missile defense.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 1 April 2014, NATO unanimously decided to suspend all practical co-operation with the Russian Federation in response to the Annexation of Crimea, but the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) was not suspended. On 18 February 2017, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov said he supported the resumption of military cooperation with the NATO alliance. In late March 2017, the Council met in advance of a NATO Foreign Ministers conference in Brussels, Belgium.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: After the subsequent 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Founding Act has been considered by the NATO member states as definitively abrogated in its entirety by Russia, while the latter has been declared at the 2022 NATO Madrid summit "a direct threat" to Euro-Atlantic security.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The idea of Russia becoming a NATO member has at different times been floated by both Western and Russian leaders, as well as some experts. In February 1990, while negotiating German reunification at the end of the Cold War with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev said that "You say that NATO is not directed against us, that it is simply a security structure that is adapting to new realities ... therefore, we propose to join NATO." However, Baker dismissed the possibility as a "dream". In 1991, as the Soviet Union was dissolved, Russian president Boris Yeltsin sent a letter to NATO, suggesting that Russia's long-term aim was to join NATO.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: During a series of interviews with filmmaker Oliver Stone, President Vladimir Putin told him that he floated the possibility of Russia joining NATO to President Bill Clinton when he visited Moscow in 2000. Putin said in an interview with David Frost in a BBC interview just before Putin was inaugurated as President of Russia for the first time in 2000. He told Frost it was hard for him to visualize NATO as an enemy. “Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world.” According to Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish Prime Minister who served as NATO Secretary General from 2009 to 2014, in the early days of Putin's presidency around 2000–2001, Putin made many statements that suggested he was favorable to the idea of Russia joining NATO.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Already at that time, however, Krystyna Kurczab-Redlich and some other reporters active in Chechnya alarmed that Putin's true nature has been exposed by the Russian atrocities during the Second Chechen War and that it by no means resembled that of a Western democrat. It was, however, convenient for the Western elites to brand these reports as Russophobic, and thus disregard them.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: On 7 October 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, and human rights activist, who reported on political events in Russia; in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005), was murdered in the elevator of her block of flats, an assassination that attracted international attention.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In response to a March 2009 suggestion by Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski that Russia join NATO, the Russian envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, stated that while Russia had not ruled it out as a future possibility, it instead preferred to keep practical limited cooperation with NATO. He emphasized that "Great powers don't join coalitions, they create coalitions. Russia considers itself a great power." However, he stated that Russia wanted to be NATO's "partner", provided that Georgia (with which Russia had a war the previous year) and Ukraine did not join the alliance.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In November 2009, Sergei Magnitsky, a Ukrainian-born Russian tax advisor responsible for exposing corruption and misconduct by Russian government officials while representing client Hermitage Capital Management, died. His arrest in 2008 and subsequent death after eleven months in police custody generated international attention and triggered both official and unofficial inquiries into allegations of fraud, theft and human rights violations in Russia. His posthumous trial was the first in the Russian Federation.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In early 2010, the suggestion of Russia joining NATO was repeated in an open letter co-written by German defense experts. They posited that Russia was needed in the wake of an emerging multi-polar world in order for NATO to counterbalance emerging Asian powers.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Putin, hovewer, later abandoned the ideas of the European integration and the Western democracy, turning instead to Eurasianism and "Putinism" as alternatives competing with the Western ideals espoused by many NATO countries. Putinism combines state capitalism with authoritarian nationalism. Putin and Russia as a whole lost respect for the values and moral authority of the West, creating a "values gap" between Russia and the West. Putin has promoted his brand of conservative Russian values, and has emphasized the importance of religion.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Russia has started to fund international broadcasters such as RT, Rossiya Segodnya (including Sputnik), and TASS. as well as several domestic media networks. Russian media has been particularly critical of the United States. In 2014, Russia cut off Voice of America radio transmissions after Voice of America criticized Russia's actions in Ukraine. Russia's freedom of the press has received low scores in the Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders, and Russia limits foreign ownership stakes of media organizations to no greater than 20%. In January 2015, the UK, Denmark, Lithuania and Estonia called on the European Union to jointly confront Russian propaganda by setting up a "permanent platform" to work with NATO in strategic communications and boost local Russian-language media. On 19 January 2015, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said the EU planned to establish a Russia-language mass media body with a target Russian-speaking audience in Eastern Partnership countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, as well as in the European Union countries. In March 2016, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that Russia was at "information war" primarily with "Anglo-Saxon mass media".


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Gay rights have divided Russia and many NATO countries, as the United States and some European countries have used their soft power to promote the protection of gay rights in Eastern Europe. Russia, on the other hand, has hindered the freedom of homosexuality and earned support from those opposed to gay marriage.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in 2019 that "Once Russia can show it is upholding democracy and human rights, NATO can seriously consider its membership." In a 2019 interview with Time Magazine, Sergey Karaganov a close advisor to Putin, claimed that not inviting Russia to join NATO was the “one of the worst mistakes in political history, It automatically put Russia and the West on a collision course, eventually sacrificing Ukraine”. Kimberly Marten argued in 2020 that NATO's enlargement made it weaker, not stronger as Moscow feared. The bad relations that emerged after 2009 were mostly caused by Russian reaction to its declining influence in world affairs. Thirdly, Russia's strong negative reaction was manipulated and magnified by both nationalists and by Putin, as ammunition in their domestic political wars. Current Russian leaderships' views of world politics "are deeply rooted in realist approaches to international relations" and they perceive "a major external military risk in NATO’s bringing the military infrastructure of its member countries near the borders of the Russian Federation; likewise, with further [formal] expansion of the Alliance." This provides a threat-based legitimacy that allows them to consolidate their domestic position, implement harsh anti-democratic measures, and justify a military build-up and aggressive actions abroad. On November 4, 2021 George Robertson, a former UK Labour defence secretary who led NATO between 1999 and 2003, told The Guardian that Putin made it clear at their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of western Europe. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’...They wanted to be part of that secure, stable prosperous west that Russia was out of at the time,” he said.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In 2022, Russia withdrew from the European Convention on Human Rights and was expelled from the Council of Europe.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Russia and the western countries signed in 1991 the Energy Charter Treaty establishing a multilateral framework for cross-border cooperation in the energy industry, principally the fossil fuel industry; Russia, however, postponed its ratificatinon, linking it to the adoption of the Energy Charter Treaty Transit Protocol. In 1998, Russia joined the G8, a forum of eight large developed countries, six of which are members of NATO.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: The Russian economy is heavily dependent on the export of natural resources such as oil and natural gas, and Russia has used these resources to its advantage. Starting in the mid-2000s, Russia and Ukraine had several disputes in which Russia threatened to cut off the supply of gas. As a great deal of Russia's gas is exported to Europe through the pipelines crossing Ukraine, those disputes affected several NATO countries. While Russia claimed the disputes had arisen from Ukraine's failure to pay its bills, Russia may also have been motivated by a desire to punish the pro-Western government that came to power after the Orange Revolution. In December 2006, Russia indicated that the ratification of the Energy Charter Treaty was unlikely due to the provisions requiring third-party access to Russia's pipelines. On 20 August 2009, Russia officially informed the depository of the Energy Charter Treaty (the Government of Portugal) that it did not intend to become a contracting party to the treaty.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: In 2012, Russia joined the World Trade Organization, an organization of governments committed to reducing tariffs and other trade barriers. These increased economic ties gave Russia access to new markets and capital, as well as political clout in the West and other countries. Russian gas exports came to be viewed as a weapon against NATO countries, and the US and other Western countries have worked to lessen the dependency of Europe on Russia and its resources. While Russia's new role in the global economy presented Russia with several opportunities, it also made the Russian Federation more vulnerable to external economic trends and pressures. Like many other countries, Russia's economy suffered during the Great Recession.


title: Russia–NATO relations

text: Following the Crimean Crisis, several countries (including most of NATO) imposed sanctions on Russia, hurting the Russian economy by cutting off access to capital. As a further consequence, Russia has also been expelled from the G8. At the same time, the global price of oil declined. The combination of Western sanctions and the falling crude price in 2014 and thereafter resulted in the 2014–15 Russian financial crisis.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: Melissa Crystal O'Neil (born July 12, 1988) is a Canadian actress and singer. In 2005, O'Neil won the third season of "Canadian Idol", the first Canadian female to have won. As an actress, she is known for her roles as Two / Rebecca / Portia Lin on the Syfy science fiction series "Dark Matter" and as Officer Lucy Chen on the ABC police procedural drama series "The Rookie".


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: O'Neil was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Her mother is Hong Kong Chinese, and her father is of Irish descent.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: O'Neil attended Terry Fox Junior High School. She attended Lester B. Pearson High School in Calgary where she performed in musicals, played rugby and was on the basketball team.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: In early 2005, while in high school, O'Neil auditioned for the third season of "Canadian Idol". The judges were impressed by her vocals, and she made it through to the top 100 round. On the first day, she sang the song "Concrete Angel" by Martina McBride a cappella and again impressed the judges; but, on the final day of competition, she forgot the words to her chosen song and froze. Nevertheless, the judges were still so impressed by her singing abilities that she continued to the top 32. After scoring the highest number of votes in her semi-final group, again with "Concrete Angel", O'Neil was granted a place in the final 10 of the contest.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: Although she was highly praised by the judges, O'Neil suffered huge setbacks in both the Top 10 and Top 9 weeks of the finals, as she was voted in both the bottom three and bottom two, respectively. Shocked by this, the judges urged viewers to vote for contestants like Melissa, who clearly had the best vocal abilities. From then on, O'Neil never fell back into the bottom three after delivering consistently praised performances, with judge Zack Werner declaring that she was "a threat to win the whole thing". On September 7, 2005, O'Neil made it into the final two of the competition, alongside Rex Goudie, and after yet more stunning performances, judge Werner famously stated that the headlines of the next day's newspapers would be "The King [Kalan Porter] is dead, long live the Queen." During the grand finale results show on September 14, 2005, O'Neil defeated Goudie to be crowned the third "Canadian Idol," as well as the first female winner, and (at 17) the youngest winner in the show's history.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: Immediately after her win on "Canadian Idol", O'Neil received a congratulatory phone call from the Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. She then signed a recording contract with Sony BMG Canada and released her first single "Alive", which hit stores on October 4, 2005 and debuted at number one on the Canadian singles chart, a position it held for four weeks. The single went on to be certified four-times platinum by the CRIA.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: On November 22, 2005, O'Neil's self-titled debut album "Melissa O'Neil", was released on Sony and debuted at number sixteen on the Canadian albums chart. The second single from her album, "Let It Go" was released in late 2005 and peaked at number seven on the singles chart. On February 7, 2006, O'Neil embarked on her first solo tour in North Bay, Ontario, named the Let It Go Tour after her second single. Her support act was her "Canadian Idol" runner-up, Rex Goudie. The third single release from O'Neil's album was "Speechless", which peaked number thirty-one, significantly lower than her two previous songs but still respectable nonetheless. In March 2006, her debut album was certified gold by the CRIA for 50,000 units shipped, and her first single "Alive" was covered by Becki Ryan in the movie "Flicka". On September 16, 2006 O'Neil returned to the "Canadian Idol" stage during grand finale of its fourth season. Here, she was surprised with the certified-gold-presentation disc of her debut album.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: In 2007, O'Neil was nominated for a Juno Award as New Artist of the Year, alongside Neverending White Lights, Tomi Swick, Patrick Watson, and Eva Avila (the latter, her "Canadian Idol" successor); however, Swick took home the award.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: As described by Glenn Sumi, of "NOW Toronto", "After winning the third season of Canadian Idol... O'Neil released a best-selling disc and then promptly began doing musical theatre, with roles in Dirty Dancing, High School Musical and the acclaimed Stratford production of Jesus Christ Superstar."


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: In the Toronto, Ontario production of "Dirty Dancing", O'Neil was a featured singer. In the Drayton Entertainment production of "High School Musical On Stage" (in St. Jacobs and Penetanguishene), O'Neill played the role of Gabriella. O'Neil's appearance as Martha/Maid by the Fire during the 2011 season's "Jesus Christ Superstar" was her Stratford Shakespeare Festival debut.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: O'Neill was featured as a lead in the Stage West Calgary production of "British Invasion" alongside former lead singer of The Guess Who, Terry Hatty, and made an appearance in "Camelot". She played Éponine in a sit-down production of "Les Misérables" in Toronto at the Princess of Wales Theatre, which ran from September 2013 through February 2014. She won the Dora Award for Outstanding Female Performance for that role.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: In March 2012, O'Neil made her Broadway debut in "Jesus Christ Superstar", where she played Martha, Maid by the Fire and worked as understudy to Mary Magdalene.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: In March 2014, O'Neil returned to Broadway in a revival of "Les Misérables", where she was a member of the ensemble and worked as understudy for the roles of Éponine and Fantine.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: O'Neil has been acting since 2015. She has had recurring roles in the 2015 CBC TV drama called "This Life" that was set in Montreal, the Cole Hauser TV crime series "Rogue", and the musical drama web series, "Lost Generation", which was set in Berlin. The show was originally called "Pulse" and had a book and score written by Duncan Sheik.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: In December 2014, O'Neil was cast in the starring role of Two / Rebecca / Portia Lin, on the Syfy TV series space opera "Dark Matter". It was a role she played from 2015 to 2017, for three seasons of the show.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: In 2018, O'Neil played the role of Suki in The CW procedural crime drama "iZombie" created by Rob Thomas and had another recurring role in the thriller "Condor", a TV remake of "Three Days of the Condor".


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: In October 2018, O'Neil was cast in the role of Officer Lucy Chen in the ABC television police drama series "The Rookie", where she plays a fellow rookie police officer opposite Nathan Fillion. O'Neil's character, which initially was Fillion's love interest, has shifted into a more ensemble role.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: O'Neil's maternal grandfather gave her a Chinese name which means "ladylike". At the time when she was competing in "Canadian Idol", O'Neil was said to be able to speak Cantonese, but not fluently.


title: Melissa O'Neil

text: The following is a discography of albums and singles released by Canadian pop music artist Melissa O'Neil, as of 2006.


title: Normal People

text: Normal People is a 2018 novel by the Irish author Sally Rooney. "Normal People" is Rooney's second novel, published after "Conversations with Friends" (2017). It was first published by Faber & Faber on 30 August 2018. The book became a best-seller in the US, selling almost 64,000 copies in hardcover in its first four months of release. A critically acclaimed and Emmy nominated television adaptation of the same name aired from April 2020 on BBC Three and Hulu. A number of publications ranked it one of the best books of the 2010s.


title: Normal People

text: The novel follows the complex friendship and relationship between two teenagers, Connell and Marianne, who both attend the same secondary school in County Sligo, Ireland, and, later, Trinity College Dublin (TCD). It is set during the post-2008 Irish economic downturn, from 2011 through 2015. Connell is a popular, handsome, and highly intelligent secondary school student who begins a relationship with the unpopular, intimidating, equally intelligent Marianne, whose mother employs Connell's mother as a cleaner. Connell keeps the affair a secret from school friends out of shame, but ends up attending Trinity with Marianne after the summer and reconciling. Well-off Marianne blossoms at university, becoming pretty and popular, while Connell struggles for the first time in his life to fit in properly with his peers. The pair weave in and out of each other's lives across their university years, developing an intense bond that brings to light the traumas and insecurities that make them both who they are.


title: Normal People

text: "Normal People" received wide critical acclaim. It was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize. It was voted as the 2018 Waterstones' Book of the Year and won "Best Novel" at the 2018 Costa Book Awards. In 2019, the novel was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. In the same year, it was ranked 25th on "The Guardian"s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century.


title: Normal People

text: Irish Independent editor Fionnán Sheahan described the book as a polemic, noting that Rooney has described herself as a Marxist and that the book features discussions about "The Communist Manifesto" document and Doris Lessing's feminist novel "The Golden Notebook".


title: Normal People

text: "Entertainment Weekly" writers ranked the book as the 10th best of the decade, with Seija Rankin writing, "Both of Sally Rooney’s novels capture the millennial ethos with raw honesty and impeccable insight. But what she broke ground with in "Conversations With Friends", she perfected in "Normal People"."


title: Normal People

text: In May 2019, BBC Three and Hulu announced that a TV series based on the novel was set to be produced. It premiered on 26 April 2020 on BBC Three and 27 April 2020 on the Australian streaming service Stan. In Ireland, the series began airing on RTÉ One on 28 April 2020. The series stars Daisy Edgar-Jones as Marianne and Paul Mescal as Connell.


title: Normal People

text: "Normal People" has themes of love in a capitalist society and across class division. The main characters, Marianne and Connell, know each other from school but also because Connell's mother is a cleaner for Marianne's mother. This establishes the class divide in their relationship as Marianne comes from a bourgeois family whereas Connell's family is working-class.


title: Normal People

text: Marianne and Connell have different views of their socioeconomic backgrounds. Connell feels that he is trapped in a cycle where the money he spends on Marianne comes from his mother who gets it from Marianne's family whereas Marianne seems unbothered by spending money. Connell lets the class divide come between them numerous times as he fears how he will be perceived. In school, Connell is popular and well liked by his classmates, unlike Marianne. This causes him to ask her to keep their relationship secret so that people do not find out his mom works for hers.


title: Normal People

text: When the pair both attend Trinity College, the class division becomes more apparent. Marianne easily fits in with her upper-class classmates who come from similar backgrounds while those people look down on Connell for his lower socioeconomic status. As their relationship continues, their class background drives them apart. Marianne and Connell start to find friends and partners in their respective social classes. When Marianne starts to date Jamie in their second year at university, Connell feels out of place in her world because of his lack of wealth.


title: Normal People

text: Socioeconomic class drives Marianne and Connell apart as they navigate early adulthood. Rooney uses these characters to explore how class divides keep people apart.


title: The Snow Queen

text: "The Snow Queen" () is an original fairy tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published 21 December 1844 in "New Fairy Tales. First Volume. Second Collection" ("Nye Eventyr. Første Bind. Anden Samling"). The story centers on the struggle between good and evil as experienced by Gerda and her friend, Kai.


title: The Snow Queen

text: The story is one of Andersen's longest and most highly acclaimed stories. It is regularly included in selected tales and collections of his work and is frequently reprinted in illustrated storybook editions for children.


title: The Snow Queen

text: The devil, in the form of an evil troll, has made a magic mirror that distorts the appearance of everything that it reflects. The magic mirror fails to reflect the good and beautiful aspects of people and things, and magnifies their bad and ugly aspects. The devil, who is headmaster at a troll school, takes the mirror and his pupils throughout the world, delighting in using it to distort everyone and everything. They attempt to carry the mirror into heaven in order to make fools of the angels and God, but the higher they lift it, the more the mirror shakes as they laugh, and it slips from their grasp and falls back to earth, shattering into billions of pieces, some no larger than a grain of sand. The splinters are blown by the wind all over the Earth and get into people's hearts and eyes, freezing their hearts like blocks of ice and making their eyes like the troll-mirror itself, seeing only the bad and ugly in people and things.


title: The Snow Queen

text: Years later, a little boy Kai (often spelled "Kay" or "Kaj" in translations) and a little girl Gerda live next door to each other in the garrets of buildings with adjoining roofs in a large city. They could get from one's home to the other's just by stepping over the gutters of each building. The two families grow vegetables and roses in window boxes placed on the gutters. Gerda and Kai have a window box garden to play in, and they become devoted to each other as playmates, and as close as if they were siblings.


title: The Snow Queen

text: Kai's grandmother tells the children about the Snow Queen, who is ruler over the "snow bees" — snowflakes that look like bees. As bees have a queen, so do the snow bees, and she is seen where the snowflakes cluster the most. Looking out of his frosted window one winter, Kai sees the Snow Queen, who beckons him to come with her. Kai draws back in fear from the window.


title: The Snow Queen

text: By the following spring, Gerda has learned a song that she sings to Kai: Because roses adorn the window box garden, the sight of roses always reminds Gerda of her love for Kai.


title: The Snow Queen

text: On a pleasant summer day, splinters of the troll-mirror get into Kai's heart and eyes. Kai becomes cruel and aggressive. He destroys their window-box garden, he makes fun of his grandmother, and he no longer cares about Gerda, since everyone now appears bad and ugly to him. The only beautiful and perfect things to him now are the tiny snowflakes that he sees through a magnifying glass.


title: The Snow Queen

text: The following winter, Kai goes out with his sledge to play in the snowy market square and hitches it to a curious white sleigh carriage, driven by the Snow Queen, who appears as a woman in a white fur-coat. Outside the city she reveals herself to Kai and kisses him twice: once to numb him from the cold, and a second time to make him forget about Gerda and his family; a third kiss would kill him. She takes Kai in her sleigh to her palace. The people of the city conclude that Kai died in the nearby river. Gerda, heartbroken, goes out the next summer, to look for him and questions everyone and everything about Kai's whereabouts. She offers her new red shoes to the river in exchange for Kai; by not taking the gift at first, the river lets her know that Kai did not drown. So Gerda climbs into a boat and the river carries her away, to start her on the right path.


title: The Snow Queen

text: Gerda next visits an old sorceress with a beautiful garden of eternal summer. The sorceress wants Gerda to stay with her forever, so she causes Gerda to forget Kai, and causes all the roses in her garden to sink beneath the earth, since she knows that the sight of them will remind Gerda of her friend. However, a while later, whilst playing in the garden, Gerda sees a rose on the sorceress's hat, then remembers Kai and begins to cry. Gerda's warm tears raise one bush above the ground, and it tells her that it could see all the dead while it was under the earth, and Kai is not among them. So she interrogates the other flowers in the garden, but they only know a single story each, which they sing to her. Realizing that they cannot help her find Kai, Gerda flees the garden of eternal summer and realizes that it's already autumn. She has wasted a lot of time, and has no warm clothes to wear.


title: The Snow Queen

text: Gerda flees and meets a crow, who tells her that Kai is in the princess's palace. Gerda goes to the palace and meets the princess and the prince, who is not Kai but looks like him. Gerda tells them her story, and they provide her with warm clothes and a beautiful coach. While traveling in the coach Gerda is captured by robbers and brought to their castle, where she befriends a little robber girl, whose pet doves tell her that they saw Kai when he was carried away by the Snow Queen in the direction of Lapland. The captive reindeer Bae tells her that he knows how to get to Lapland since it is his home.


title: The Snow Queen

text: The robber girl frees Gerda and the reindeer to travel north to the Snow Queen's palace. They make two stops: first at the Lapp woman's home and then at the Finn woman's home. The Finn woman tells the reindeer that the secret of Gerda's unique power to save Kai is in her sweet and innocent child's heart:


title: The Snow Queen

text: When Gerda reaches the Snow Queen's palace, she is halted by the snowflakes guarding it. She prays the Lord's Prayer, which causes her breath to take the shape of angels, who resist the snowflakes and allow Gerda to enter the palace. Gerda finds Kai alone and almost immobile on a frozen lake, which the Snow Queen calls the "Mirror of Reason", on which her throne sits. Kai is engaged in the task that the Snow Queen gave him: he must use pieces of ice like a Chinese puzzle to form characters and words. If he is able to form the word the Snow Queen told him to spell she will release him from her power and give him a pair of skates.


title: The Snow Queen

text: Gerda runs up to Kai and kisses him, and he is saved by the power of her love: Gerda weeps warm tears on him, melting his heart and burning away the troll-mirror splinter in it. As a result, Kai bursts into tears, which dislodge the splinter from his eye, and becomes cheerful and healthy again. He remembers Gerda, and the two dance around so joyously that the splinters of ice Kai had been playing with are caught up into the dance. When they tire of dancing the splinters fall down to spell "eternity," the very word Kai was trying to spell. Kai and Gerda leave the Snow Queen's domain with the help of the reindeer, the Finn woman, and the Lapp woman. They meet the robber girl, and from there they walk back to their home. Kai and Gerda find that everything at home is the same and that it is "they" who have changed; they are now grown up, and are also delighted to see that it is summertime.


title: The Snow Queen

text: Andersen met Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind in 1840, and fell in love with her, but she was not interested in him romantically (although the two became friends). According to Carole Rosen, Andersen was inspired to model the icy-hearted Snow Queen on Lind after she rejected him as a suitor.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: Frederik Willem de Klerk (, , 18 March 1936 – 11 November 2021) was a South African politician who served as state president of South Africa from 1989 to 1994 and as deputy president from 1994 to 1996 in the democratic government. As South Africa's last head of state from the era of white-minority rule, he and his government dismantled the apartheid system and introduced universal suffrage. Ideologically a conservative and an economic liberal, he led the National Party (NP) from 1989 to 1997.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: Born in Johannesburg to an influential Afrikaner family, de Klerk studied at Potchefstroom University before pursuing a career in law. Joining the NP, to which he had family ties, he was elected to parliament and sat in the white-minority government of P. W. Botha, holding a succession of ministerial posts. As a minister, he supported and enforced apartheid, a system of racial segregation that privileged white South Africans. After Botha resigned in 1989, de Klerk replaced him, first as leader of the NP and then as State President. Although observers expected him to continue Botha's defence of apartheid, de Klerk decided to end the policy. He was aware that growing ethnic animosity and violence was leading South Africa into a racial civil war. Amid this violence, the state security forces committed widespread human rights abuses and encouraged violence between the Xhosa and Zulu people, although de Klerk later denied sanctioning such actions. He permitted anti-apartheid marches to take place, legalised a range of previously banned anti-apartheid political parties, and freed imprisoned anti-apartheid activists such as Nelson Mandela. He also dismantled South Africa's nuclear weapons program.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk negotiated with Mandela to fully dismantle apartheid and establish a transition to universal suffrage. In 1993, he publicly apologized for apartheid's harmful effects. He oversaw the 1994 non-racial election in which Mandela led the African National Congress (ANC) to victory; de Klerk's NP took second place. De Klerk then became Deputy President in Mandela's ANC-led coalition, the Government of National Unity. In this position, he supported the government's continued liberal economic policies but opposed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to investigate past human rights abuses because he wanted total amnesty for political crimes. His working relationship with Mandela was strained, although he later spoke fondly of him. In May 1996, after the NP objected to the new constitution, de Klerk withdrew it from the coalition government; the party disbanded the following year and reformed as the New National Party. In 1997, he retired from active politics and thereafter lectured internationally.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk was a controversial figure among many sections of South African society, all for different reasons. He received many awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize for dismantling apartheid and bringing universal suffrage to South Africa. Conversely, he received criticism from anti-apartheid activists for offering only a qualified apology for apartheid, and for ignoring the human rights abuses by state security forces. He was also condemned by Pro-Apartheid Afrikaners, who contended that by abandoning apartheid, he betrayed the interests of the country's Afrikaner minority.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: F. W. de Klerk was born on 18 March 1936 in Mayfair, a suburb of Johannesburg. His parents were Johannes "Jan" de Klerk and Hendrina Cornelia Coetzer – "her forefather was a Kutzer who stems from Austria." He was his parents' second son, having a brother, Willem de Klerk, who was eight years his senior. De Klerk's first language was Afrikaans and the earliest of his distant ancestors to arrive in what is now South Africa did so in the late 1680s.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk had a secure and comfortable upbringing, and his family had played a leading role in Afrikaner society; they had longstanding affiliations with South Africa's National Party. His paternal great-grandfather, Jan van Rooy, had been a Senator, while his paternal grandfather, Willem, had been a clergyman who fought in the Second Boer War and stood twice, unsuccessfully, as a National Party candidate. His paternal aunt's husband was J. G. Strijdom, a former Prime Minister. His own father, Jan de Klerk, was also a senator, served as the secretary of the National Party in Transvaal, president of the senate for seven years, acting state president, and as a member of the country's cabinet for fifteen years under three prime ministers. In this environment, de Klerk was exposed to politics from childhood. He and family members would be encouraged to hold family debates; his more conservative opinions would be challenged by his brother Willem, who was sympathetic to the more liberal, "enlightened" faction of the National Party. Willem became a political analyst and later split from the National Party to found the liberal Democratic Party.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: The name "de Klerk" is derived from Le Clerc, Le Clercq and De Clercq, and is of French Huguenot origin (meaning "clergyman" or "literate" in old French). De Klerk noted that he was also of Dutch descent, with an Indian ancestor from the late-1690s or early 1700s. He was also said to have been descended from the Khoi interpreter known as Krotoa or Eva.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: When de Klerk was twelve years old, the apartheid system was officially institutionalised by the South African government; his father had been one of its originators. He therefore was, according to his brother, "one of a generation that grew up with the concept of apartheid". He was inculturated in the norms and values of Afrikaner society, including festivals like Kruger Day, loyalty to the Afrikaner nation, and stories of the "age of injustice" that the Afrikaner faced under the British. He was brought up in the Gereformeerde Kerk, the smallest and most socially conservative of South Africa's three Dutch Reformed Churches.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: The de Klerk family moved around South Africa during his childhood, and he changed schools seven times over seven years. He eventually became a boarder at the Hoërskool Monument (Monument High School) in Krugersdorp, where he graduated with a first-class pass in 1953. He was nevertheless disappointed not to get the four distinctions he was hoping for.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: Between 1954 and 1958, de Klerk studied at Potchefstroom University, graduating with both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Law. He later noted that during this legal training, he "became accustomed to thinking in terms of legal principles". While studying there, he became editor of the student newspaper, vice-chair of the student council, and a member of the Afrikaanse Studentebond's (a large South African youth movement) national executive council. At university, he was initiated into the Broederbond, a secret society for the Afrikaner social elite. As a student, he played both tennis and hockey and was known as "something of a ladies' man". At the university, he began a relationship with Marike Willemse, the daughter of a professor at the University of Pretoria. The couple married in 1959, when de Klerk was 23 and his wife 22.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: After university, de Klerk pursued a legal career, becoming an articled clerk with the firm Pelser in Klerksdorp. Relocating to Pretoria, he became an articled clerk for another law firm, Mac-Robert.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 1962, he set up his own law partnership in Vereeniging, Transvaal, which he built into a successful business over ten years.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: During this period, he involved himself in a range of other activities. He was the national chair of the Junior Rapportryers for two years, and chair of the Law Society of Vaal Triangle. He was also on the council of the local technikon, on the council of his church, and on a local school board.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 1972, his alma mater offered him a chair in its law faculty, which he accepted. Within a matter of days he was also approached by members of the National Party, who requested that he stand for the party at Vereeniging. De Klerk's candidature was successful and in November he was elected to the House of Assembly. There, he established a reputation as a formidable debater. He took on a number of roles in the party and government. He became the information officer of the Transvaal National Party, responsible for its propaganda output, and helped to establish a new National Party youth movement. He joined various party parliamentary study groups, including those on the Bantustans, labour, justice, and home affairs. As a member of various parliamentary groups, de Klerk went on several foreign visits, to Israel, West Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It was in the latter in 1976 that he observed what he later described as the pervasive racism of US society, later noting that he "saw more racial incidents in one month there than in South Africa in a year". In South Africa, de Klerk also played a senior role in two select committees, one formulating a policy on opening hotels to non-Whites and the other formulating a new censorship law that was less strict than the one that had preceded it.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 1975, Prime Minister John Vorster predicted that de Klerk would one day become leader of South Africa. Vorster planned to promote de Klerk to the position of a deputy minister in January 1976, but instead the job went to Andries Treurnicht. In April 1978, de Klerk was promoted to the position of Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions. In this role, he restored full autonomy to sporting control bodies which had for a time been under the jurisdiction of the government. As minister of Post and Telecommunications, he finalized contracts that oversaw the electrification of that sector. As Minister of Mining, he formalized a policy on coal exports and the structuring of Eskom and the Atomic Energy Corporation. He then became Minister of the Interior, he oversaw the repeal of the Mixed Marriages Act.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 1981, de Klerk was awarded the Decoration for Meritorious Service for his work in the government. As education minister between 1984 and 1989, he upheld the apartheid system in South Africa's schools, and extended the department to cover all racial groups.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: For most of his career, de Klerk had a very conservative reputation, and was seen as someone who would obstruct change in South Africa. He had been a forceful proponent of apartheid's system of racial segregation and was perceived as an advocate of the white minority's interests. While serving under P. W. Botha's government, de Klerk was never part of Botha's inner circle.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: P. W. Botha resigned as leader of the National Party after an apparent stroke, and de Klerk defeated Botha's preferred successor, finance minister Barend du Plessis, in the race to succeed him. On 2 February 1989, he was elected leader of the National Party. He defeated main rival Barend du Plessis to the position by a majority of eight votes, 69–61. Soon after, he called for the introduction of a new South African constitution, hinting that it would need to provide greater concession to non-white racial groups. After becoming party leader, de Klerk extended his foreign contacts. He travelled to London, where he met with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Although she opposed the anti-apartheid movement's calls for economic sanctions against South Africa, at the meeting she urged de Klerk to release the imprisoned anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela. He also expressed a desire to meet with representatives of the US government in Washington D.C., although American secretary of state James Baker informed him that the US government considered it inopportune to have de Klerk meet with President George H. W. Bush.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: Botha resigned on 14 August 1989, and de Klerk was named acting state president until 20 September, when he was elected to a full five-year term as state president. After he became acting president, ANC leaders spoke out against him, believing that he would be no different from his predecessors; he was widely regarded as a staunch supporter of apartheid. The prominent anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu shared this assessment, stating: "I don't think we've got to even begin to pretend that there is any reason for thinking that we are entering a new phase. It's just musical chairs". Tutu and Allan Boesak had been planning a protest march in Cape Town, which the security chiefs wanted to prevent. De Klerk nevertheless turned down their proposal to ban it, agreeing to let the march proceed and stating that "the door to a new South Africa is open, it is not necessary to batter it down". The march took place and was attended by approximately 30,000 people. Further protest marches followed in Grahamstown, Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Durban. De Klerk later noted that his security forces could not have prevented the marchers from gathering: "The choice, therefore, was between breaking up an illegal march with all of the attendant risks of violence and negative publicity, or of allowing the march to continue, subject to conditions that could help to avoid violence and ensure good public order." This decision marked a clear departure from the Botha era.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: As President, he authorised the continuation of secret talks in Geneva between his National Intelligence Service and two exiled ANC leaders, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. In October, he personally agreed to meet with Tutu, Boesak, and Frank Chikane in a private meeting in Pretoria. That month, he also released a number of elderly anti-apartheid activists then imprisoned, including Walter Sisulu. He also ordered the closure of the National Security Management System. In December he visited Mandela in prison, speaking with him for three hours about the idea of transitioning away from white-minority rule. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that he no longer feared that Marxists would manipulate the ANC. As he later related, the collapse of "the Marxist economic system in Eastern Europe... serves as a warning to those who insist on persisting with it in Africa. Those who seek to force this failure of a system on South Africa should engage in a total revision of their point of view. It should be clear to all that it is not the answer here either."


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: On 2 February 1990, in an address to the country's parliament, he introduced plans for sweeping reforms of the political system. A number of banned political parties, including the ANC and Communist Party of South Africa, would be legalized, although he emphasized that this did not constitute an endorsement of their socialist economic policies nor of violent actions carried out by their members. All of those who were imprisoned solely for belonging to a banned organization would be freed, including Nelson Mandela; the latter was released a week later. He also announced the lifting of the Separate Amenities Act of 1953, which governed the segregation of public facilities. The vision set forth in de Klerk's address was for South Africa to become a Western-style liberal democracy; with a market-oriented economy which valued private enterprise and restricted the government's role in economics.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk later related that "that speech was mainly aimed at breaking our stalemate in Africa and the West. Internationally we were teetering on the edge of the abyss." Throughout South Africa and across the world, there was astonishment at de Klerk's move. Foreign press coverage was largely positive and de Klerk received messages of support from other governments. Tutu said that "It's incredible... Give him credit. Give him credit, I do." Some black radicals regarded it as a gimmick and that it would prove to be without substance. It was also received negatively by some on the white right-wing, including in the Conservative Party, who believed that de Klerk was betraying the white population. De Klerk believed that the sudden growth of the Conservatives and other white right-wing groups was a passing phase reflecting anxiety and insecurity. These white right-wing groups were aware that they would not get what they wanted through the forthcoming negotiations, and so increasingly tried to derail the negotiations using revolutionary violence. The white-dominated liberal Democratic Party, meanwhile, found itself in limbo, as de Klerk embraced much of the platform it had espoused, leaving it without a clear purpose.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: Further reforms followed; membership of the National Party was opened up to non-whites. In June, parliament approved new legislation that repealed the Natives Land Act, 1913 and Native Trust and Land Act, 1936. The Population Registration Act, which established the racial classificatory guidelines for South Africa, was rescinded.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 1990, de Klerk gave orders to end South Africa's nuclear weapons programme; the process of nuclear disarmament was essentially completed in 1991. The existence of the nuclear programme was not officially acknowledged before 1993.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: His presidency was dominated by the negotiation process, mainly between his NP government and the ANC, which led to the democratization of South Africa. On 17 March 1992, de Klerk held a whites-only referendum on ending apartheid, with the result being an overwhelming "yes" vote to continue negotiations to end apartheid.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: Nelson Mandela was distrustful of the role played by de Klerk in the negotiations, particularly as he believed that de Klerk was knowledgeable about 'third force' attempts to foment violence in the country and destabilize the negotiations. De Klerk's possible role in the 'third force' came to the attention of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but was ultimately never clarified. De Klerk was accused by writer Anthony Sampson of complicity in the violence among the ANC, the Inkatha Freedom Party and elements of the security forces. He also accused de Klerk of permitting his ministers to build their own criminal empires.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: On 17 July 1992, the Boipatong massacre by the Inkatha Freedom Party occurred, killing 45 people. The massacre caused a resurgence of international pressure against South Africa over claims of police collusion, leading to a weaker position at the negotiation tables for the National Party.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: On 30 April 1993, de Klerk issued an apology for the actions of the apartheid government, stating that: "It was not our intention to deprive people of their rights and to cause misery, but eventually apartheid led to just that. Insofar as to what occurred we deeply regret it... Yes we are sorry". Tutu urged people to accept the apology, stating that "saying sorry is not an easy thing to do... We should be magnanimous and accept it as a magnanimous act", although Tutu was privately frustrated that de Klerk's apology had been qualified and had not gone so far as to call apartheid an intrinsically evil policy.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk authorized the raid on Mthatha against suspected Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA) fighters on 8 October 1993 that killed three teenagers and two twelve year olds. The Minister of Defence said the raid had been undertaken to pre-empt attacks by the APLA on civilians and that one of the victims had brandished a weapon. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded the raid was a "gross violation of human rights"


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: On 10 December 1993, de Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for their work in ending apartheid.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: South Africa held its first universal elections in 1994 from 26 to 29 April. The ANC won the election with 62 percent, while the National Party received 20 percent. De Klerk became deputy president in the national unity government under Nelson Mandela.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk had been unhappy that changes had been made to the inauguration ceremony, rendering it multi-religious rather than reflecting the newly elected leader's particular denomination. When he was being sworn in, and the chief justice said "So help me God", de Klerk did not repeat this, instead stating, in Afrikaans: "So help me the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit".


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: Mandela reappointed de Klerk's finance minister, Derek Keys, and retained Chris Stals, a former member of the Broederbond, as the head of the Central Bank. De Klerk supported the coalition's economic policies, stating that it "accepted a broad framework of responsible economic policies".


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk's working relationship with Mandela was often strained, with the former finding it difficult adjusting to the fact that he was no longer president. De Klerk also felt that Mandela deliberately humiliated him, while Mandela found de Klerk to be needlessly provocative in cabinet. One dispute occurred in September 1995, after Mandela gave a Johannesburg speech criticizing the National Party. Angered, de Klerk avoided Mandela until the latter requested they meet. The two ran into each other, and they publicly argued in the streets. Mandela later expressed regret for their disagreement but did not apologize for his original comments. De Klerk was also having problems from within his own party, some of whose members claimed that he was neglecting the party while in the government.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: Many in the National Party—including many members of its executive committee—were unhappy with the other parties' agreed upon new constitution in May 1996. The party had wanted the constitution to guarantee that it would be represented in the government until 2004, although it did not do so. On 9 May, de Klerk withdrew the National Party from the coalition government. The decision shocked several of his six fellow Afrikaner cabinet colleagues; Pik Botha, for example, was left without a job as a result. Roelf Meyer felt betrayed by de Klerk's act, while Leon Wessels thought that de Klerk had not tried hard enough to make the coalition work. De Klerk declared that he would lead the National Party in vigorous opposition to Mandela's government to ensure "a proper multi-party democracy, without which there may be a danger of South Africa lapsing into the African pattern of one-party states".


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In de Klerk's view, his greatest defeat in the negotiations with Mandela had been his inability to secure a blanket amnesty for all those working for the government or state during the apartheid period. De Klerk was unhappy with the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). He had hoped that the TRC would be made up of an equal number of individuals from both the old and new governments, as there had been in the Chilean human rights commission. Instead, the TRC was designed to broadly reflect the wider diversity of South African society, and contained only two members who had explicitly supported apartheid, one a member of a right-wing group that had opposed de Klerk's National Party. De Klerk did not object to Tutu being selected as the TRC's chair for he regarded him as politically independent of Mandela's government, but he was upset that the white Progressive Party MP Alex Boraine had been selected as its deputy chair, later saying of Boraine: "beneath an urbane and deceptively affable exterior beat the heart of a zealot and an inquisitor."


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk appeared before the TRC hearing to testify for Vlakplaas commanders who were accused of having committed human rights abuses during the apartheid era. He acknowledged that security forces had resorted to "unconventional strategies" in dealing with anti-apartheid revolutionaries, but that "within my knowledge and experience, they never included the authorization of assassination, murder, torture, rape, assault or the like". After further evidence of said abuses was produced by the commission, de Klerk stated that he found the revelations to be "as shocking and as abhorrent as anybody else" but insisted that he and other senior party members were not willing to accept responsibility for the "criminal actions of a handful of operatives", stating that their behavior was "not authorized [and] not intended" by his government. Given the widespread and systemic nature of the abuses that had taken place, as well as statements by security officers that their actions had been sanctioned by higher ranking figures, Tutu questioned how de Klerk and other government figures could not have been aware of them. Tutu had hoped that de Klerk or another senior white political figure from the apartheid era would openly accept responsibility for the human rights abuses, thereby allowing South Africa to move on; this was something that de Klerk would not do.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: The TRC found de Klerk guilty of being an accessory to gross violations of human rights on the basis that as State President he had been told that P. W. Botha had authorized the bombing of Khotso House but had not revealed this information to the committee. De Klerk challenged the TRC on this point, and it backed down. When the final TRC report was released in 2002, it made a more limited accusation: that de Klerk had failed to give full disclosure about events that took place during his presidency and that in view of his knowledge about the Khotso House bombing, his statement that none of his colleagues had authorized gross human rights abuses was "indefensible". In his later autobiography, de Klerk acknowledged that the TRC did significant damage to his public image.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 1997, de Klerk was offered the Harper Fellowship at Yale Law School. He declined, citing protests at the university. De Klerk did, however, speak at Central Connecticut State University the day before his fellowship would have begun.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 1999, de Klerk and his wife of 38 years, Marike de Klerk, were divorced following the discovery of his affair with Elita Georgiades, then the wife of Tony Georgiades, a Greek shipping tycoon who had allegedly given de Klerk and the NP financial support. Soon after his divorce, de Klerk and Georgiades were married. His divorce and remarriage scandalised conservative South African opinion, especially among the Calvinist Afrikaners. In 1999, his autobiography, "The Last Trek – A New Beginning", was published. In 2002, following the murder of his former wife, the manuscript of her own autobiography, "A Place Where the Sun Shines Again", was submitted to de Klerk, who urged the publishers to suppress a chapter dealing with his infidelity.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 2000, de Klerk established the pro-peace FW de Klerk Foundation of which he was the chairman. De Klerk was also chairman of the Global Leadership Foundation, headquartered in London, which he set up in 2004, an organisation which works to support democratic leadership, prevent and resolve conflict through mediation and promote good governance in the form of democratic institutions, open markets, human rights and the rule of law. It does so by making available, discreetly and in confidence, the experience of former leaders to today's national leaders. It is a not-for-profit organisation composed of former heads of government and senior governmental and international organisation officials who work closely with heads of government on governance-related issues of concern to them.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: On 3 December 2001, Marike de Klerk was found stabbed and strangled to death in her Cape Town flat. De Klerk, who was on a brief visit to Stockholm, Sweden, to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Nobel Prize foundation, immediately returned to mourn his dead ex-wife. The atrocity was reportedly condemned strongly by South African president Thabo Mbeki and Winnie Mandela, among others, who openly spoke in favour of Marike de Klerk. On 6 December 21-year-old security guard Luyanda Mboniswa was arrested for the murder. On 15 May 2003, he received two life sentences for murder, as well as three years for breaking into Marike de Klerk's apartment.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 2005, de Klerk quit the New National Party and sought a new political home after the NNP merged with the ruling ANC. That same year, while giving an interview to US journalist Richard Stengel, de Klerk was asked whether South Africa had turned out the way he envisioned it back in 1990. His response was:


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: There are a number of imperfections in the new South Africa where I would have hoped that things would be better, but on balance I think we have basically achieved what we set out to achieve. And if I were to draw balance sheets on where South Africa stands now, I would say that the positive outweighs the negative by far. There is a tendency by commentators across the world to focus on the few negatives which are quite negative, like how are we handling AIDS, like our role vis-à-vis Zimbabwe. But the positives – the stability in South Africa, the adherence to well-balanced economic policies, fighting inflation, doing all the right things in order to lay the basis and the foundation for sustained economic growth – are in place.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 2008, he repeated in a speech that "despite all the negatives facing South Africa, he was very positive about the country".


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In 2006, he underwent surgery for a malignant tumor in his colon. His condition deteriorated sharply, and he underwent a tracheotomy after developing respiratory problems. He recovered and on 11 September 2006 gave a speech at Kent State University Stark Campus.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In January 2007, de Klerk was a speaker promoting peace and democracy in the world at the "Towards a Global Forum on New Democracies" event in Taipei, Taiwan, along with other dignitaries including Poland's Lech Wałęsa and Taiwan's president Chen Shui-Bian.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk was an Honorary Patron of the University Philosophical Society of Trinity College Dublin, and Honorary Chairman of the Prague Society for International Cooperation. He also received the gold medal for Outstanding Contribution to Public Discourse from the College Historical Society of Trinity College, Dublin, for his contribution to ending apartheid.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk was also a member of the advisory board of the Global Panel Foundation based in Berlin, Copenhagen, New York, Prague, Sydney and Toronto – founded by the Dutch entrepreneur Bas Spuybroek in 1988, with the support of Dutch billionaire Frans Lurvink and former Dutch Foreign Minister Hans van den Broek. The Global Panel Foundation is known for its behind-the-scenes work in public policy and the annual presentation of the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award with the Prague Society for International Cooperation.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: De Klerk was a member of the advisory board of the WORLD.MINDS Foundation, based in Switzerland. WORLD.MINDS is known for establishing close personal ties between leaders in government, science and business.


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: After the inauguration of Jacob Zuma as South Africa's president in May 2009, de Klerk said he was optimistic that Zuma and his government can "confound the prophets of doom".


title: F. W. de Klerk

text: In a BBC interview broadcast in April 2012, he said he lived in an all-white neighborhood. He had five servants, three coloured and two black: "We are one great big family together; we have the best of relationships." About Nelson Mandela, he said, "When Mandela goes it will be a moment when all South Africans put away their political differences, will take hands, and will together honour maybe the biggest known South African that has ever lived."