Putin said back in 2011 that he does not recognize the integrity of Ukraine
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Former US President Bill Clinton claims that back in 2011, after a conversation with Vladimir Putin, he understood that Russia’s attack on Ukraine was only “a matter of time.” Clinton’s statements are cited by the Financial Times. The former president spoke with them in New York in a public conversation with the head of the Carlyle Group investment fund. The question was, among other things, about aid to Ukraine.
According to Clinton, he talked with Putin about Ukraine for 12 years during the World Economic Forum in Davos. The current Russian president then held the position of prime minister. “Putin told me in 2011, three years before the annexation of Crimea, that he did not agree with the agreement I reached with his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin,” Clinton said. We are talking about the Budapest memorandum signed in 1994, in which the USA, Russia and other countries guarantee the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for the removal of nuclear weapons from its territory. “He said – I don’t agree with it, I don’t support it and I’m not connected with it. – And that day I understood that (the invasion of Ukraine) is only a matter of time,” said the former US president.
Earlier, Bill Clinton did not say that Putin made such statements at the meeting with him. He did not cite the context in which Putin spoke about the Budapest memorandum at the meeting with him.
Clinton led the USA from 1993 to 2001, Putin came to power in Russia in 1999. From 2008 to 2012, he held the post of Prime Minister.
Clinton’s wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who also participated in the event, said that Ukraine must win over Russia or, in any case, return to its control the territories captured by Russia after February 24, 2022.
The Kremlin has not yet commented on Bill Clinton’s statements.
The Russian authorities violated the Budapest memorandum by annexing Crimea in 2014. In 2022, Moscow announced the annexation of four more regions of Ukraine. There are ongoing hostilities.
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