The fact that the US left the door open for Russia to join NATO
Russia spoke out about former President Bill Clinton saying that the US had left the door open for Russia to become a NATO member.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the views of Former US President Bill Clinton on NATO’s supposed open-door policy towards Russia, and emphasized that Washington made it impossible for Moscow to join the military bloc.
“I know for sure that the US side has repeatedly said that it is not possible to have such a membership. On the contrary, in reality it is said that the doors are closing, because that is basically impossible,” Peskov told reporters on April 11.
Earlier last week, former President Bill Clinton wrote an article in The Atlantic justifying his administration’s policy of expanding NATO.
“My policy is to work for the best, while at the same time expanding NATO to prepare for the worst. Yes, NATO has expanded despite Russia’s objections, but the expansion goes beyond America’s relationship with Russia,” the former president explained. Bill Clinton added that “the US has left the door open for Russia to become a member of NATO”.
Former US President Bill Clinton said he told the Russian leader that Moscow could one day join NATO. Mr. Clinton affirms his commitment to the late President Boris Yeltsin – who ran Russia from 1991 to 1999 – and then as the successor President Vladimir Putin.
“We left the door open for Russia to join NATO, which I made clear to Mr Yeltsin and then confirmed to his successor, Mr. Putin,” former President Bill Clinton wrote in The Atlantic on April 7.
In the article, Mr. Clinton defended NATO’s expansion to the east after the breakup of the Soviet Union. If Russia chooses to return to radical imperialism, an enlarged NATO and a growing European Union will strengthen the security of the continent, he wrote.
At the end of February, Russian President Vladimir Putin released a nearly hour-long video address to the nation in which he explained the Kremlin’s security concerns with respect to Ukraine, mainly related to Ukraine’s policy. Kiev’s NATO-oriented foreign policy.
In his speech, Putin recalled a conversation with Clinton about NATO in 2000, but the conversation was a different picture. President Putin said he had raised questions about Russia’s accession to NATO with then-president Bill Clinton, but to no avail. According to the Russian leader, he asked Clinton how the US would react if Russia joined the US-led military alliance, and described Mr Clinton’s response as “quite conservative”.
Instead of bringing Moscow into NATO, President Putin says Washington has responded by supporting terrorists inside Russia, withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and expanding NATO in a way that threatens Russia’s security. NATO defends its “open door policy” and says it is a purely defensive alliance. Meanwhile, Moscow believes that NATO’s actions in Yugoslavia and Libya contradict this view.
In an interview with the BBC in 2000, Putin refused to rule out Russia’s potential membership in NATO, but only “as an equal partner”.
The Kremlin cites Kiev’s desire to join NATO as one of the reasons for the ongoing military offensive in Ukraine. Russia demanded that the neighboring country declare itself a neutral state.
According to the Kremlin, NATO’s refusal to provide security guarantees to Moscow prompted Russia to recognize the independence of the separatist republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in Donbass, eastern Ukraine.
Russia launched a large-scale attack on neighboring Ukraine on February 24, after accusing Kiev of failing to comply with the terms of the Minsk agreement signed in 2014.
Russia has since demanded Ukraine officially declared a neutral country and will never join the US-led NATO alliance. Kiev insists Russia’s attack is completely unprovoked and denies that it is planning to retake two breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine by force.
at Blogtuan.info – Source: laodong.vn – Read the original article here