The President addressed the Russian people a year after the start of the biggest war in Europe since World War II Vladimir Putin He repeated his usual negative views about the West’s policy towards Moscow in the decades after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
Putin claimed that NATO and its relations with Ukraine are a growing threat to Russia. He repeated his false claims about these relations, including the claim that the Ukrainian government is under the control of the US and the Western military alliance. He claimed that Ukraine has “become a slave” of the West.
George BushDuring the presidency of (George W. Bush), he was the national security adviser for four years of his eight-year career in the White House Stephen Hadley (Stephen Hadley) denied Putin’s claims. He reminded that NATO does not pose any threat to Russia and that Moscow has agreed to cooperate with the alliance for years.
“A real effort has been made to accept Russia as part of Europe. NATO was not a threat to Russia, NATO wanted a constructive relationship with Russia. …These efforts were made to soften Russia’s reaction to NATO expansion,” Hadley said in an interview with “Zoom” from his home in Washington on February 28.
Yeltsin warned Clinton
Hadley’s years in the White House coincided with the biggest expansion in NATO history: in 2004, seven Eastern European countries, including the Baltic states, joined the alliance.
Historians and scholars have long debated the goals of NATO expansion. Some have questioned the wisdom of its eastward expansion. Russian officials have put forward the idea that there is no need for a Cold War-era alliance.
In the mid-1990s, President Boris Yeltsin American counterpart Bill Clintonwarned and threatened to “humiliate” NATO if it admits Eastern European countries to membership.
Under Putin, these suspicions turned into outright accusations and allegations of betrayal by Washington and its allies against Moscow. Russia was particularly angered by NATO’s promise in 2008 to Ukraine and Georgia that they would one day become members of the alliance.
Freedom radio