US ex-president Bill Clinton said that after meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Davos in 2011, he believed that a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine was a matter of time.
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The Financial Times reports Clinton’s words that in a private conversation, Putin told him that he did not support the Budapest Memorandum, which provides for Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees.
Putin told me in 2011, three years before he took Crimea, that he did not agree with the document that I concluded with (former head of the Russian Federation) Boris Yeltsin … He said: “I do not agree with this and this is not support, I’m not affiliated with them,” and from that day on, I knew it was only a matter of time,” Clinton said.
However, Clinton did not explain exactly what provisions of the document the short man in the Kremlin was talking about at the time.
In the Budapest Memorandum, Russia, the United States and Great Britain recognized the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Moscow, along with London and Washington, provided Kyiv with security in exchange for the elimination of the Ukrainian nuclear arsenal.
The document was signed in 1994 by Boris Yeltsin, Bill Clinton, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and British Prime Minister John Major.
Clinton’s wife, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was also present in the west in New York, said that in order to stop hostilities, Ukraine must either defeat Russia or, at a minimum, regain the territories lost in the country’s east.
I wouldn’t trust him [путіну] at the negotiating table under no circumstances, unless the Ukrainians they support have enough leverage,” Clinton said.
The Clintons urged the West to step up support for Ukraine and said that Kyiv could win if it was provided with adequate weapons and ammunition. In their opinion, the refusal to support Ukraine will give courage not only to Putin, but also to Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
This is not the first time Clinton has spoken out about the Budapest Memorandum. In early April 2023, he said that he regretted that in 1994 he persuaded the Ukrainian authorities to abandon the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
Source: Racurs
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