NEW YORK (Dagbladet): Three years before Putin attacked Ukraine for the first time in 2014, Clinton had a conversation with the Russian president during the World Economic Forum in Davos. In the meeting, Putin must have, according to Clinton, made it clear that he did not feel bound by the Budapest memorandum.
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The Budapest Memorandum was signed by his predecessor Boris Yeltsin in 1994. In the agreement, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan gave up their nuclear weapons in exchange for a guarantee from Russia that they would be allowed to preserve their sovereignty. The agreement was also signed by Clinton on behalf of the United States and then Prime Minister John Major for Great Britain.
Meeting in Davos
The information from Clinton makes many people wonder whether the US and its allies in Europe should not have been far more prepared for Putin’s plans to attack Ukraine.
– Putin told me in 2011, three years before he took Crimea, that he did not agree with the agreement I made with Boris Yeltsin, that they would respect the territory of Ukraine if the country gave up its nuclear weapons, Clinton said during an event at the 92nd Street Y in New York on Thursday, according to The Guardian and continued:
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– Putin said to me: I know that Boris agreed to this with you and John Major and Nato, but he never got it through the Duma (the Russian parliament journ. note). We also have our extreme nationalists. I do not agree with it and I do not support it and I am not bound by this. From that day I knew it was only a matter of time,” Clinton said of Putin’s attack.
When Clinton had the conversation with Putin, the Russian president had already attacked Chechnya in 1999 and Georgia in 2008.
Deep distrust
After Putin occupied the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, he declared that Russia was no longer bound by the Budapest Memorandum. Putin defended this by claiming that Ukraine had become a different state after the Maidan uprising.
– We have not signed any binding documents with this state, Putin said, according to The Guardian.
His wife Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state under Barack Obama, was also present with the former president. She has a deep distrust of Putin and believes he interfered and helped Donald Trump defeat her in the 2016 presidential election.
– Putin sees himself in a fair fight to undermine Western democracy and rebuild as much of the Russian empire as he can. So he’s not going to stop, Hillary Clinton said, according to the report Financial Times.
Daniel Fried, who was assistant secretary of state responsible for Europe and Eurasia under both George Bush and Barack Obama, was also present during the event with Clinton.
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He says that Putin’s statements that he would not follow the Budapest memorandum were not known to everyone in the Obama administration, but that he expected the former president to share the information with his wife, Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time.
Should have been prepared
Fried is now a researcher at the Atlantic Council think tank. He also says that Putin threatened to enter Ukrainian territory already three years before Clinton’s meeting with Putin in Davos. It is said to have happened in a meeting between Russia and NATO in 2008 when Bush was US president. Then Putin is said to have claimed that not everything went legally when the Crimean Peninsula was transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954.
– I was present and sat next to the Polish national security adviser, Mariusz Handzlik. We stood up both shaken and turned to each other and said: Did you hear what I just heard? says Fried according to The Guardian and continues:
– From that moment I thought that Putin would turn against Ukraine and said this to Condi Rice (then Secretary of State) and Steve Hadley (then National Security Advisor).
He therefore believes that the USA and the West should have been prepared for Putin’s attack.
– American authorities were surprised by the Crimean operation, but should not have been, given the warnings, says Fried.
2023-05-06 02:04:34
#Knew #Putin #attack
