Posted on 05/19/2022 12:16:02 PM PDT by marshmallow
Vovan and Lexus, Russian pranksters known for trolling Western politicians, celebrities, and other public figures, revealed Tuesday that they had tricked George W. Bush into speaking with them. The former president played an instrumental role in the second wave of NATO’s eastward expansion, and the first Euromaidan crisis in Ukraine in 2004.
The United States didn’t keep its word to Moscow on NATO’s eastward expansion due to shifting circumstances, and the Bush administration always wanted to see Ukraine join the Western alliance, George W. Bush has revealed in a candid interview with Vovan and Lexus.
“I wanted [Russia] on the fringe of NATO, I wanted Ukraine into NATO”, Bush, who served as US president between 2001 and 2009, told the pranksters, who posed as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a portion of the interview that aired Thursday at a Russian educational forum.
“I thought for a while that Russia would be more cooperative. And then [Vladimir] Putin changed dramatically”, Bush said.
“I felt that Ukraine needed to be in the EU and NATO”, he added.
Asked to address Russia’s oft-repeated argument that James Baker, US secretary of state under George H.W. Bush, had promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev not to expand the bloc eastward in 1990, Bush Jr. suggested that such promises were irrelevant because they were made a long time ago.
“Listen, times change. Baker was the secretary of state with my dad, which was years ago, and so, uh, the United States [was working under the] principle of adjusting to the times. And that’s why we’re trying to show our support for your country now”, he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sputniknews.com ...
Russia didn’t have the power to stop it.
Even though this is done by pranksters (supposedly) - a public admission like this is actually extremely serious stuff.
We have figured out his word means nothing. Just like the Clintons.
The principle of adjusting to the times; yet another facet to the Bush foreign policy.
What a bum
A verbal contract is worth the paper it’s written on.
Bkmrk
Gosh, FReepers have denied this ever happened!
They are propagandists who *love* war.
Its been covered ad nauseam, there was no promise to not expand NATO, even Gorbachev says no such promise was made.
Russia and the West finally struck an agreement in September that would allow NATO to station its troops beyond the Iron Curtain. However, the deal only concerned a reunified Germany, with further eastward expansion being inconceivable at the time.
"The Soviet Union still existed and the countries of Eastern Europe were still part of the Soviet structures – like the Warsaw Pact – which was not officially dissolved until July 1991," said Amélie Zima, doctor of political science at the Thucydide Centre (Panthéon-Assas) in Paris. "We cannot speak of betrayal, because a chain of events that would rearrange the security configuration in Europe was about to take place."
In short, at a time when Westerners were offering the "guarantees" spoken of by Vladimir Putin, no one could have predicted the collapse of the USSR and the historic upheavals that followed.
https://www.france24.com/en/russia/20220130-did-nato-betray-russia-by-expanding-to-the-east
Seriously? Bush is 75.
so sorry to have to say it but
we elect garbage and we get garbage
GIGO
Yes - The Smirking Chimp is just another bloodthirsty neocon monkey.
“I thought for a while that Russia would be more cooperative. And then [Vladimir] Putin changed dramatically”, Bush said.
“I felt that Ukraine needed to be in the EU and NATO”, he added.
What part of any of that sounds like the President of the United States? These statements really sum up, quite nicely in fact, that our political class has moved on from us. We're nothing more than the bill payers of their worldly aspirations.
You missed the Chimp’s Freudian slip, tlozo...
Our Neocon Warriors on parade!!
Bush is 75.
It was also just a private verbal promise that the Soviets asked us to make formal in writing, and we refused. Both us and the Russians knew it had no meaning or value after the Administration that made it was out of office.
The promise wasn't broken - it expired.
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