In April 2008, during a RussiaNATO Council, the President of Russia and the then President of the United States were the protagonists of a heated confrontation over Ukraine. And Putin said: You have to explain to me what Ukraine is because I just don’t know
But you understand, George, Ukraine is not even a state!
Vladimir Putin accompanied the sentence by throwing his fist on the table.
Before him stood a perplexed George Bush, then President of the United States. Council of Russians, April 2008. The important date. Because the subject of the dispute there was certainly not Kyiv, but Georgia, which Russia will then attack in August.
During the closeddoor meeting, Putin let his colleagues know that Moscow sees NATO’s rapprochement with Russia’s borders as a real threat to its interests and promises to take appropriate action.
He adds that Russia will recognize Abkhazia and North Ossetia if NATO promises Georgia membership.
And so far we are in a normal dialectic between not exactly similar powers. But Putin spoke calmly and en passant about Georgia, an inside source of a NATO country delegation told the newspaper Kommersant.
But when it came to Ukraine, Putin got angry. He said to Bush, But you understand, George, that’s not even a state. For once, the Russian President lost his proverbial calm at the mere mention of this name. “Which Ukraine? We gave it part of its Eastern European territories and a sizable portion too! You have to tell me what Ukraine is because I just don’t know, Ukraine is nothing.”
After this outburst, Putin composed himself. In fact, he apologized for raising his voice. But then he coolly added that if Ukraine were accepted into NATO, it would immediately cease to exist only as a state. Asked for further clarifications, he added that if this were the case, Russia could start immediately with the annexation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
The news is not the anticipation of what would happen later in 2014 and 2022. The news is Putin’s outburst, which has never been denied by the Kremlin. Another sign that Ukraine is almost a private matter for the Russian president.
The day after this report was published, Kommersant asked the Kremlin for a statement confirming its contents. other times.
The Russian business newspaper was created in the last years of perestroika and referred to the prerevolutionary newspaper of the same name. In Yeltsin’s time, up to the 1998 crisis, it reached its peak of popularity and became the newspaper of the liberal bourgeoisie that was forming in the big cities. It was then bought by Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch who will soon be ousted and indexed by Putin. In fact, in 2008 it changed hands again and was bought by billionaire Alisher Usmanov, a personal friend of the president, for two hundred million dollars.
From that day on, backstories of any kind ended.
March 23, 2022 (change March 23, 2022 | 11:32)
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