At the end of the 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to withdraw Soviet troops from Germany, American officials repeatedly promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward after the reunification of Germany.
Summary
The policy preached by those who made a short-sighted choice of NATO-centricity, geopolitical zero-sum games and a master-slave logic, having assumed the role of ruling the destinies of humankind, prevailed within Western society. Suffice to recall the bombing of Yugoslavia, the eastward expansion of the North-Atlantic Alliance despite the guarantees that had been given to the Soviet leadership, as well as the support by a number of European capitals of an anti-constitutional armed government coup in Ukraine and the subsequent imposition of unilateral sanctions against Russia.
Disproof
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative painting the 2013-14 protests in Kyiv as a violent coup, and a recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about NATO and encircled Russia.
NATO does not "expand" in the imperialistic sense described by pro-Kremlin media. Rather, it considers the applications of candidate countries who want to join the alliance based on their own national will. As such, NATO enlargement is not directed against Russia and there is no record of NATO promising Russia it would not expand. Even if there was a personal assurance from an individual leader, it could not replace Alliance consensus and does not constitute a formal NATO agreement. In 2014, Mikhail Gorbachev, last president of the Soviet Union, confirmed:
"The topic of 'NATO expansion' was not discussed at all, and it wasn't brought up in those years. I say this with full responsibility. Not a single Eastern European country raised the issue, not even after the Warsaw Pact ceased to exist in 1991. Western leaders didn't bring it up either."
There was no armed coup d’état in Ukraine. The Euromaidan was a nationwide spontaneous and endogenous reaction by numerous segments of the Ukrainian population to former President Yanukovych’s sudden withdrawal from the promised Association Agreement with the European Union in November 2013.
The protesters’ demands included constitutional reform, a stronger role for parliament, the formation of a government of national unity, an end to corruption, early presidential elections and an end to violence.
Read a similar case claiming that the West organised the Maidan coup in order to transform Ukraine into an anti-Russian state, or that Crimea left Ukraine as a result the alleged coup, or that the Euromaidan was initiated to lower Ukraine’s living standards, or even that the Euromaidan was an American financed coup d'etat to gain control over Ukraine.