(Washington) “Too bad, Vladimir, you looked for it”: the former head of American diplomacy, Hillary Clinton, mocked Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, about the enlargement of NATO since the invasion of Ukraine through Moscow.
The former diplomat was speaking at the State Department where her official portrait was unveiled, accompanied by former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“It was a real point of contention. And we have always said that no one is forced to join NATO, that people choose and want to join NATO,” she said in a short speech.
Finland, which became a member this year, and Sweden, 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 the enlargement of NATO to Eastern Europe and the prospect of Ukraine’s eventual membership as a pretext to justify the invasion, which prompted a response from massive Western support for Kyiv.
When she led American diplomacy in 2009, under the presidency of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton led the famous “Reset” (“restart”) of relations between Washington and Moscow, already quite bad after the attack, the year previous, from another former Soviet republic, Georgia, by Russia.
But relations between the two powers deteriorated again upon the return to the Kremlin in 2012 of President Putin, who personally accused Hillary Clinton of having fomented demonstrations by Russian opposition officials.
Democratic candidate for the White House in 2016, she was beaten by Donald Trump, amid accusations of Russian interference in the presidential election.