It was the year 2000. Shortly after winning his first elections, the new Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, began to search for his place in the world and took advantage of Bill Clinton's visit to Moscow to sound him out about the possibility of Russia joining the NATO.
Putin himself told the American filmmaker Oliver Stone in an interview with him in 2015. Since the 1990s and during the first decade of the 21st century, Russia and Western countries have been trying to foster a friendship. The G-7 expands in 2002 to the G-8 to make room for Russia. The European Union held two summits a year with the Russian president. In 2003, the NATO-Russia Council was created to strengthen relations and in 2010, with Dimitri Medvedev in the Kremlin, the Alliance described Russia as a "strategic partner".
The armed conflict in Ukraine has ended up changing the words. In the new strategic conception of NATO approved in Madrid, Putin's Russia is no longer a partner, but "the direct and most significant threat" to the peace and security of the allies.
Relations actually broke down after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which led to the first Western sanctions against Russia, and the start of the war in Donbass. And in fact, they could have been broken much earlier, since those years in which Russia was considered an ally were not easy either. The relationship was always marked by different points of view and, above all, mutual mistrust.
In the West, politicians and public opinion were scandalized by Russia's actions in the Chechen wars. Russia, for its part, has always viewed NATO as an "offensive" and even "aggressive" organization, as Putin's spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, described it this week.
This idea is based, first of all, on NATO's expansion to the east, which Moscow has always considered a threat, or on military actions such as the 1999 bombing of Serbia, or the intervention in Iraq.
In addition, despite flirting with the West, in Putin's first years in the Kremlin, nostalgia for the power that the USSR had was introduced into the political elite and, therefore, into society. In 2005, Putin says that his disintegration was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the” 20th century.
Shortly before the 2000 elections, the first he won, Putin declared in a BBC interview that Russia would consider joining NATO, but on the condition that it be treated as an equal. Moscow has always accused the US of seeking a relationship with Russia from above.
In February 2007, the Russian leader delivers a speech at the Munich Security Conference that is interpreted by many experts and observers as a key moment in that mistrust. Putin proclaimed that the unipolar world, dominated by the US, was over and that the expansion of NATO was a hostile act. With its economy expanding thanks to gas and oil, he was saying that Russia had risen up and wanted to have influence in the world. Apparently he didn't pay much attention to it.
The following four years, in which Putin cedes the Kremlin chair to his partner Dimitri Medvedev while he remained prime minister, mark the last attempt to redirect relations, but it is also the moment in which the last hope evaporates.
In those years, an attempt was made to reset relations with the US. Obama visited Moscow in 2009. Medvedev visited the United States in 2010. And then both signed the new Start treaty for the reduction of nuclear weapons in Vienna. NATO declares Russia a “strategic partner”.
It seemed that everything was back on track. Igor Yurguens, Medvedev's adviser, said in an interview with La Vanguardia that he did not rule out "a future with Russia in NATO." But in the end it was all a mirage. The US insisted on installing its anti-missile shield in central and eastern Europe, which Moscow considered a threat. Putin, who already warned him in Munich, was not in the Kremlin. But it didn't matter.
At the end of 2011, Medvedev, who had eaten hamburgers and fries with Obama on his American tour, demands "legal guarantees" that the shield will not be used against Russia and threatens to deploy nuclear-capable missiles in Europe. Thus the airs of cold war that were felt in the Bavarian capital returned. A year of protests in Russia, in 2012, which Moscow said were fomented by Washington, made the atmosphere more difficult until the Ukraine crisis broke out in 2014.
Vladimir Putin reminded Oliver Stone that, when suggesting that Russia could enter NATO, Clinton replied with a simple "Why not?" But the American delegation got very nervous. Twenty-two years later, the Russian leader makes the whole world nervous.
