Putin tells Tucker Carlson Bill Clinton agreed that Russia could join NATO

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed thatformer US president Bill Clinton told him Russia could be welcomed into NATO, the western world's military alliance.

Putin also claimed that Clinton later backtracked and said that it wasn’t going to happen. He made the remarks in apre-recorded interview with Tucker Carlson that aired on Thursday (Feb 8).

In the interview recorded at the Kremlin, Putin said that after he became president in 2000, he asked Clinton if Russia could join the defence alliance after the issues between the countries had settled at the end of the Yugoslav War.

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“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 said to Carlson.

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“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,’"the Russian president said.

"You can ask him [Bill Clinton]. I think he will watch our interview, he’ll confirm it,” he added. “I wouldn’t have said anything like that if it hadn’t happened. Okay, well, it’s impossible now.”

You tricked us, says Putin referring to the US

Putin said that after the Soviet Union's fall, Russians anticipated being “welcomed into the brotherly family of civilized nations.”

“Nothing like this happened. You tricked us,” Putin said while referring to the US.

“The promise was that NATO would not expand eastward. But it happened five times. There were five waves of expansion,” he said.

“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'," said the Russian president.

Watch:Russian President Vladimir Putin gives interview to Tucker Carlson

Giving reference to a historic address delivered by Russia’s first post-Soviet President Boris Yeltsin to Congress, in which he proclaimed “God Bless America", Putin said, “Everything he said were signals, let us in."

If Clinton had said yes, the Russian president said, "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."

"But it didn’t happen. Well, no means no, okay, fine."

(With inputs from agencies)

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