(Washington) “It’s a shame, Vladimir, I looked for it”: Former US diplomat Hillary Clinton mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday about expanding NATO since the invasion of Ukraine via Moscow.
The former diplomat was speaking at the State Department, where her official photo was revealed, accompanied by former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
It was a real point of contention. “We have always said that no one is forced to join NATO, and that people choose and want to join NATO,” she said in a short speech.
Finland, which became a member this year, and Sweden, which is still waiting, sought to join the Western military alliance after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, turning the page on decades of neutrality.
The Russian president partly used NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe and the prospect of eventual Ukrainian membership as a pretext to justify the invasion, which prompted a response of massive Western support for Kiev.
When she led American diplomacy in 2009, during the presidency of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton led the famous “reset” of relations between Washington and Moscow, which were already very bad after the attack, the previous year, by another former Soviet country. Republic of Georgia by Russia.
But relations between the two powers deteriorated again after the return to the Kremlin in 2012 of President Putin, who personally accused Hillary Clinton of provoking demonstrations organized by Russian opposition leaders.
She was the Democratic Party’s nominee for the White House in 2016, and was beaten by Donald Trump, amid accusations of Russian interference in the presidential elections.
