WASHINGTON, December 23. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned his US counterpart, George W. Bush, back in 2008 that Washington’s intention to admit Ukraine to NATO will cause a long-term confrontation between Russia and the United States, according to declassified US government documents released by the National Security Archive, a public research organization affiliated with George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
"Now I'd like to repeat what I said to Condi and Gates (the then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates - TASS) in Moscow on NATO enlargement. It won't be new to you, and I don't expect a response; I just want to say it out loud. I'd like to emphasize accession to NATO of a country like Ukraine will create for the long-term a field of conflict for you and us, long-term confrontation," Putin was quoted as saying by the US National Security Council translators.
When asked by Bush why he though so, Putin said that this would create a threat of NATO moving its military bases and various arms systems to the exact proximity to the Russian border. Apart from that, he noted that not all the Ukrainians were happy about their country’s potential membership in NATO and that a third of Ukraine’s population, or 17 million people, were Russians.
In an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson in February 2024, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Washington put pressure on other NATO countries, promoting the idea of expanding the alliance to include Ukraine and Georgia. "In 2008, at the summit in Bucharest, they declared that the doors for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO were open," he noted. "Germany, France seemed to be against it, as well as some other European countries. But then, as it turned out later, [US] President [George W.] Bush - and he's such a tough guy, a tough politician - as I was told later, ‘he exerted pressure on us and we had to agree’," Putin said. "And then they say 'Ukraine won't be in NATO, you know'. I say 'I don't know. I know you agreed in 2008. Why won't you agree in the future?' 'Well, they pressed us then.’ I say, ‘why won't they press you tomorrow and you'll agree again?’ Well. It's nonsensical. Who's there to talk to? I just don't understand. We're ready to talk. But with whom? Where are the guarantees?"
In April 2008, at the Bucharest summit, NATO countries included a written promise to accept Ukraine and Georgia into the alliance (without specifying a time frame) in the final declaration. In February 2019, Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, or parliament, adopted amendments to the constitution cementing the country’s striving toward NATO membership. Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly said that that Ukraine wants to join NATO.