Russian President Vladimir Putin previously said that the statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken contradicts what is said by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Russia decided that it didn't want to join NATO in the 1990s even though people talked about it, said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who spoke to television host Stephen Colbert on Thursday. Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have maintained that their nation's attempt to join the bloc was stonewalled by the West.
Blinken appeared on The Late Show to talk about US policy and the reasons Washington believes Putin is working against his own goals by attacking Ukraine.
He wanted to prevent NATO from getting bigger with Ukraine. The US official said that the two Nordic nations sent to NATO this week, now it is with Finland and Sweden.
Colbert cited Pope Francis's opinion that NATO's expansion in Europe was partly to blame for the crisis in Ukraine, but the secretary said that was not the case.
He assured that NATO is a defensive alliance. It does not have an aggressive intent against Russia. It has never attacked Russia, and won't attack Russia. It doesn't intend to attack Russia. The host then suggested that Russia should be allowed to join NATO as a result of the crazy idea. In the 1990s, Blinken said that was something that people talked about. The Russians decided that wasn't what they wanted to do, he added, as the audience laughed.
The same claim that Russia had a chance to become a NATO member but declined to do so has been made by a number of US officials, including former President Bill Clinton, who wrote a Russia-blasting op-ed last month that mentioned the issue but disputed Putin's accounts of exchanges with him.
In February, Putin remembered how during Clinton's visit to Moscow in 2000, he asked his guest how the US would react if Russia asked for membership in the alliance. He said that the response to my question was very restrained.
The former US leader wrote in his response that NATO expanded despite Russia's objections, but expansion was more than the US relationship with Russia. He said that the US left the door open for Russia's eventual membership in NATO. Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, commented on Clinton's article in more definitive terms.
The American side has spoken about the impossibility of such membership for a long time. He said that the doors, on the contrary, are closed because it is fundamentally impossible.
Russia has called out NATO, saying its expansion towards the Russian border posed a serious threat to Russian national security. Moscow made a last-ditch attempt to secure legally binding guarantees that Ukraine would not join the bloc, but was told that none would be given during the build-up of tensions before the attack on Ukraine.
The US claimed that the open-door policy was essential for NATO, even though the founding document contains no such provision and allows any member to block the accession of new members. The policy has taken on new relevance after Turkey threatened to veto the applications of Finland and Sweden.
In late February, Russia attacked the neighboring state after Ukraine failed to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014, and Moscow s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The German and French protocols were designed to give the breakaway regions special status within the Ukrainian state.
The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists that the Russian offensive was unprovoked and has denied that it was planning to retake the two republics by force.