Putin says Bill Clinton told him Russia could join NATO before pulling back hours later

At a meeting here in the Kremlin with the outgoing President Bill Clinton, right here in the next room, I said to him, I asked him: 'Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?' Suddenly he said, 'You know, it's interesting. I think so,'

The promise was that NATO would not expand eastward. But it happened five times. There were five waves of expansion... We were saying, 'Please don't. We are as bourgeois now as you are. We are a market economy and there is no Communist Party power. Let's negotiate.'

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