Transcripts of conversations between Vladimir Putin and former US President George W. Bush have emerged online from which it appears that the Kremlin leader had clearly expressed his opposition to Ukraine’s membership of NATO, among other key positions, as early as 2001 and 2008, according to the press center of the National Security Archive. The news is reported by Rbc-Ukraine. Already in 2001, Putin had told Bush that Ukraine’s membership of NATO would create long-term conflict between Russia and the United States. Putin then argued that Ukraine was a complex, artificially created state made up of territories of neighboring countries. He claimed that Russians make up about a third of Ukraine’s population and that a significant share of its residents perceive NATO as a hostile structure. Putin stated that membership would create serious problems for Russia, pose a threat through the deployment of military bases and new weapons systems near its borders, and generate uncertainty and danger. He added that Moscow would rely on anti-NATO forces in Ukraine to prevent the expansion of the Alliance and would continue to create obstacles to such expansion. Then in 2008, Putin predicted a conflict between the United States and Russia, as well as a possible “split” of the Ukrainian state, adding that divisions within Ukraine could lead to its fragmentation. He reiterated his narrative of Ukraine as an “artificially created state in the Soviet era” and expressed concern about the bringing of NATO’s military infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders. Putin told Bush that he had long argued that Ukraine was divided between pro-Western and pro-Russian forces and that once pro-Western leaders came to power they quickly became internally divided. Moscow, the Ukrainian newspaper recalls, does not accept the current version of the US peace plan and one of the points it refuses to accept is Ukraine’s future membership of NATO, according to an anonymous source close to the Kremlin
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