Overview

• RIA Novosti quotes German politician Ralf Nimayer alleging U.S. leaders orally assured Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would not expand eastward and asserting later enlargement, including infrastructure in former East Germany, violated those assurances.
• The coverage reiterates the legal framework: the Two‑Plus‑Four Treaty was signed in Moscow on September 12, 1990 by the FRG, GDR, USSR, USA, UK and France to set external conditions for reunification and restore German sovereignty.
• Russia-based scholar Vladislav Belov argues reunification proceeded too quickly and at Soviet expense, contending a harder Soviet negotiating line could have secured major financial benefits and possibly altered the USSR’s trajectory.
• TASS highlights enduring disparities, reporting average wages in the East about 15% lower and average incomes about 20% lower than in the West, after a 50–60% collapse in industrial output during the 1990s deindustrialization.
• Political polarization features prominently in the analysis, with strong AfD results in 2024 regional elections in Saxony (30.6%) and Thuringia (32.8%) and research showing a durable East German identity among younger generations.