Bill Clinton said he had made it clear to Yeltsin and Putin that Moscow could join the Western military bloc one day
Former US President Bill Clinton says he told the Russian leadership that Moscow could one day join NATO. Clinton said he brought this point before the late Boris Yeltsin, who governed Russia between 1991 and 1999, and then before President Vladimir Putin.
“We left the door open for Russia’s eventual membership in NATO, something I made clear to Yeltsin and later confirmed to his successor, Vladimir Putin,” the former US president wrote in an op-ed published in The Atlantic on Thursday.
In late February, Putin recalled the conversation he had with Clinton about NATO in 2000, but his account painted a different picture. According to the Russian president, he asked Clinton how the US would respond if Russia joined NATO, and Putin described Clinton’s reaction as “rather restrained.”
In an interview with the BBC in 2000, Putin refused to rule out Russia’s potential membership, but only “as an equal partner.”
In his op-ed, Clinton defended the bloc’s expansion eastward after the breakup of the Soviet Union. “If Russia chose to revert to ultranationalist imperialism, an enlarged NATO and a growing European Union would bolster the continent’s security,” he wrote.
Russia, meanwhile, has repeatedly stated that it views the bloc’s expansion as a threat to national security.
NATO continues to defend its ‘open-door policy’ and maintains that it is a purely defensive alliance.
Moscow cited Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO as one of reasons for its ongoing military campaign in the country. Russia demands that Ukraine declare itself a neutral state.
Russia attacked the neighboring country in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French brokered Minsk Protocol was designed to regularize the status of the regions within the Ukrainian state.
Kiev says the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.
