'You Tricked Us': Putin Recalls How Ex-US Prez. Bill Clinton 'Deceived' Russia Over NATO Membership

Moscow – Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed former US President Bill Clinton for deceiving Moscow over membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). In a rare interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, the Russian President said that Clinton told him that Russia had a shot at being part of the Western alliance, but later told Putin that "it wasn't going to happen”. Putin recalled that he had discussions with Clinton about joining NATO after tensions between the two nations settled at the end of the Yugoslav War. In the two-hour-long interview, the Russian leader also touched upon the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and slammed the West for meddling in the ongoing conflict. 

“At a meeting here in the Kremlin with the outgoing President Bill Clinton, right here in the next room, I said to him, I asked him: ‘Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?’ Suddenly he said, ‘You know, it’s interesting. I think so,’” Putin told Carlson in the interview which was released on X, formally known as Twitter. “But in the evening, when we met for dinner, he said: ‘You know, I’ve talked to my team, no, it’s not possible now.’ You can ask him. I think he will watch our interview, he’ll confirm it,” the Russian President furthered.  Putin mentioned that after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was expecting to be welcomed into the family of “brotherly civilised nations”. “Nothing like this happened. You tricked us,” Putin said, referring to the US and Clinton specifically. “The promise was that NATO would not expand eastward. But it happened five times. There were five waves of expansion,” he continued. “We tolerated all that. We were trying to persuade them. We were saying, ‘Please don’t. We are as bourgeois now as you are. We are a market economy and there is no Communist Party power. Let’s negotiate,'" he added. 

Putin recalls how Russia wants to be a friend

During the thought-provoking conversation, the Russian leader recalled how former Russian President Boris Yeltin’s historic address to Congress in which he proclaimed “God Bless America”. “Everything he said were signals, let us in,” Putin remarked. However, he noted that the potential relations between the two nations hit rock bottom after the NATO forces bombed Belgrade after Russia extended its support for the Serbian cause. “Had he (Clinton) said yes the process of rapprochement would have commenced and eventually it might have happened if we had seen some sincere wish on the side of our partners,” Putin said. “But it didn’t happen. Well, no means no, okay, fine,” the Russian leader exclaimed. When asked about Elon Musk's tech company Neuralink implanting the first AI chip into a human subject, Putin called Musk a “Smart Person”. “I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk. He will do as he sees fit,” Putin said. “Nevertheless, you’ll need to find some common ground with him. Search for ways to persuade him,” he urged. “I think he’s a smart person. I truly believe he is. So you’ll need to reach an agreement with him because this process needs to be formalized and subjected to certain rules," he added.