The NYT took note in 2004 that parliamentary opposition to NATO's expansion was growing in Russia
While Russia has resigned itself to NATO's expansion, albeit grudgingly, the reality of NATO forces being deployed in the Baltics -- on short notice -- has deeply unsettled and angered its politicians and commanders, prompting some of the sharpest criticism of the alliance since its war against Serbia in 1999.
Russia's lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on Wednesday denouncing NATO's expansion generally and the deployment of the F-16's specifically.
Echoing warnings in Russia's new military doctrine set forth last fall, the resolution called on President Vladimir V. Putin to reconsider Russia's international agreements with NATO and its own defense strategies, including its nuclear posture.
Few expect a new cold war to erupt in Europe, but NATO's expansion has further chilled a not very warm peace, especially between Russia and the Baltic states.
Lithuania and Estonia have recently expelled Russian diplomats accused of spying on, among other things, NATO activities, prompting tit-for-tat expulsions by Russia.
This is quite in contrast with the 2003 coverage in the same newspaper of the 96-0 US Senate vote for that 2004 NATO expansion, which barely had mentioned that "past Russian opposition to NATO expansion has faded under President Vladimir V. Putin".
So, I'm interested to know if the Russian Duma had condemned the earlier 1999 NATO expansion before their 2004 statement.
(I did find a US army paper from 1998 mentioning that "The deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma's security committee, Sergey Boskholov, considers it inadmissible that the Baltic countries should join NATO." However, that committee had like 4 or 5 deputy chairmen, so not quite clear what kind of support his position had back then, or if it extended to non-Baltic countries.)