In the years leading up to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, diplomats lost their authority, their role reduced to echoing the Kremlin's aggressive rhetoric.

BBC Russian asks former diplomats, as well as ex-Kremlin and White House insiders, how Russian diplomacy broke down.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml 30 points 2 years ago (25 children)

It might be hard to imagine now, but Mr Putin himself told the BBC back in 2000 that "Russia is ready to co-operate with Nato... right up to joining the alliance".

"I cannot imagine my country isolated from Europe," he added.

Back then, early in his presidency, Mr Putin was eager to build ties with the West, a former senior Kremlin official told the BBC.

Gotta wonder how Russia never ended up being able to NATO despite this.

[–] OrnluWolfjarl@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (12 children)

NATO laughed them out of the room, then proceeded to pretend they were still the USSR.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/why-didnt-russia-join-west-after-soviet-union-died-blame-bill-clinton

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO%E2%80%93Russia_relations

[–] zephyreks@programming.dev 4 points 2 years ago

CATO as a source is worse than RT lol. Talk about arguing in bad faith.

load more comments (11 replies)

load more comments (23 replies)