To be fair, NATO didn't accept any states between East Germany (1990) and Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland (99).<p>During that time Russia had a failed coup (91), Yugoslavia had crumbled and devolved into war (92-95), Russia had fought one Chechen war (94-96) and was in the middle of another, state assets had been sold to form the oligarchy (95), and Putin had just inherited power.<p>It's not unreasonable to think the 1990 plan was to incorporate Russia into Europe, and by 1999 that was revealed as unreasonable.