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Russian President Vladimir Putin had warned his American counterpart, George W. Bush, as early as 2008 that Washington's efforts to admit Ukraine into NATO would lead to a long-term confrontation between Russia and the United States.
This warning comes from declassified US government documents recently released by the National Security Archive, a public research organization affiliated with George Washington University in Washington, DC.
According to the documents, Putin told Bush that NATO's expansion into Ukraine would create, in the long run, a "field of conflict" between Moscow and Washington. He stressed that this was a warning and not a demand for a response, adding that admitting a country like Ukraine into NATO would have serious consequences for Russian-American relations.
When Bush asked why he saw this as a threat, Putin argued that Ukraine's membership would pave the way for the deployment of NATO military bases and various weapons systems very close to Russia's borders. He also added that there was no consensus within Ukraine on NATO membership, noting that about a third of the population, or about 17 million people, were Russian.
Putin has repeated these positions later. In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in February 2024, the Russian president stated that the United States exerted pressure on other NATO countries to promote the expansion of the alliance towards Ukraine and Georgia. He referred to the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008, where it was announced that the doors of the alliance were open to these two countries, despite the reservations expressed by Germany, France and several other European countries.
Putin claimed that the Bush administration had pressured European allies to reach this statement, raising questions about the credibility of guarantees that Ukraine would not become part of NATO in the future.
In the final declaration of the Bucharest summit, NATO countries included a written pledge to admit Ukraine and Georgia, without setting a timeline. Meanwhile, in February 2019, the Ukrainian parliament adopted constitutional amendments that sanction the country's orientation towards NATO membership. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly stated that membership in the alliance remains a strategic goal of Kiev.
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