MOSCOW, May 19. /TASS/. Former US President George W. Bush, in a telephone conversation with renowned Russian pranksters Vladimir Kuznetsov (Vovan) and Alexey Stolyarov (Lexus), confessed that the US administration his father George Bush had led really promised the Soviet Union’s former president, Mikhail Gorbachev, that NATO would not expand. An extract from the prank call was presented at the educational marathon conference New Horizons organized by the Russian Znanie (Knowledge) society on Thursday.

The pranksters managed to put through a video call to George W. Bush playing themselves off as Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky. In the conversation they recalled that ex-US Secretary of State James Baker had vowed to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward.

Bush replied that was really so, but at the same time commented that Baker was the Secretary of State during his father’s administration many years ago. And as the years moved on, he said, the US "was adjusting to the times".

Bush confessed that he really wished to see Ukraine join NATO.

"I thought for a while Russia would be more cooperative, and then Putin changed dramatically," he added. Bush answered in the affirmative to the duo’s question about whether he agreed that not only Ukraine, but the entire Western world was now at war with the Russians.

In the prank call to the former US leader, the comedic duo touched upon some other political subjects that made headline news in the recent past. The former US president described Georgia’s former leader, Mikhail Saakashvili, as a "violent man" and admitted that the US had problems with him in Georgia.

"Putin set a trap and he fell into it," Bush noted. He also remarked that Ukraine’s current leader should have asked him for advice if Saakhashvili should "be a part of his government."

Responding to the duo’s remark about the Pentagon-funded biolabs in Ukraine, Bush said that he remembered that program well enough. When told that the facilities had been successfully evacuated to safety, he replied that he was glad to hear that and whoever carried it out was a smart individual.

Even more still unpublished extracts from the video call to Bush will be presented in an upcoming episode of the V&L Show on Rutube.