According to declassified US government documents, when he was US President, Bill Clinton stressed at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in 2000 that NATO’s eastward expansion did not pose a threat to Moscow and stated his readiness to discuss the possibility of Russia joining the North Atlantic Alliance. RIA Novosti reports.
The National Security Archive at George Washington University, a non-profit research organization, published notes by diplomat and translator Strobe Talbott, then US Deputy Secretary of State, taken during a meeting between Putin and Clinton in the Kremlin in June 2000.
“From the very beginning of the NATO expansion process, I knew that this could be a problem for Russia. I understood and I want everyone to understand that NATO expansion does not threaten Russia in any way,” Clinton said.
She stressed that “if our successors focus on each other as the main threat to worry about, they will lose the ability to solve other problems together.”
However, as declassified documents show, the very next day the US president was “much less sincere on this issue.”
In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in February 2024, Putin said that Russia could have become a member of NATO back in the early 2000s if the United States had shown sincere interest.