Former President Bill Clinton took aim at critics who say his administration's treatment of Russia paved the way for President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Clinton spoke during the annual Casey Shearer Memorial Lecture event at Brown University on Tuesday.
"It is not true that we did anything to isolate, humiliate, or ignore Putin," Clinton said. "That’s the biggest load of bull you’ll ever hear."
"I do not believe that there was anything we could have done to prevent this. Ukraine needs to prevail," Clinton said, the New York Post reported.
Clinton also recalled visiting former Russian President Boris Yeltsin in 2017 and discussing Putin, who at the time was in the second term of his presidency.
"I said [to Yeltsin], 'I’m just not sure about Putin,'" Clinton told lecture attendees. "He’s very able, but I don’t think he believes in democracy. [Yeltsin] said, 'You may be right.'"
Putin began his country's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, seeking the "demilitarization" of Ukraine and demanding that Ukraine drop its bid to join NATO.
Clinton discussed how his administration started the process of admitting the Baltic states (Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia) into NATO in the late 1990s.
"The idea that we were trying to jam Russia or isolate them … that’s just not true," he said.
Clinton on Tuesday said he has "spent sleepless nights thinking about" whether Russia was doomed to remain under authoritarian rule for the long term, and he worried about the global implications of Putin’s leadership.
Clinton said he first became wary of Putin after a 2006 birthday celebration for Yeltsin. Putin had expressed interest in bringing the Clinton Foundation’s AIDS program to St. Petersburg.
Putin looked at Clinton's plan and proposed quadrupling the cost per care for patients. Clinton refused, citing concerns that the higher cost would prevent the foundation from treating other high-need patients in low-income countries.
"Putin said, 'Give me a day or two to think about it,'" Clinton said Tuesday. "They took the plan and did their own program. He was always kind of trying to build this klepto state."
Clinton also defended his decision to engage with China’s authoritarian President Jiang Zemin in 1998.
"It does make a difference, even in authoritarian systems, who’s running the show," Clinton said, alluding to current Chinese president Xi Jinping’s different leadership style. "If I had to do it again, under the facts I was facing then, I would probably do the same thing."
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