When U.S. President George W. Bush first met Russian president Vladimir Putin, he praised him as “an honest, straightforward man who loves his country.” Bush indicated that, more than a decade after the Cold War ended, it was “time to move beyond suspicion and towards straight talk.” Thereafter, both presidents established a good working relationship based, in part, on candor and frankness. Putin’s speech at the Munich security conference did not please his hosts, but it had the virtue of clarifying important differences. Similarly, his speech to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)–Russia Council meeting in Bucharest was forthright and blunt. The compromise language of the Bucharest Declaration—Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO”—was a personal rebuke to the Russian leader, for he had made it clear that NATO expansion to these countries was a “red line” for Russia. Two years earlier Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov warned publicly that Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO could lead to “a collossal shift in global geopolitics.” But those promoting NATO membership for both believed the Russian position amounted to anachronistic sphere-of-influence thinking, and they were determined to prevent what they described as a “Russian veto” on NATO expansion. Putin’s remarks on Georgia in Bucharest—discussed in chapter 4—attracted few headlines. His alleged comments on Ukraine, however, were viewed with alarm at the time by some and considered ominously prophetic by many after 2008, and especially so in the spring of 2014. According to an unnamed NATO country official, an irate Putin turned to Bush and said: “George, you do realize that Ukraine is not even a state. What is Ukraine? Part of its territory is Eastern Europe but the greater part is a gift from us!” Putin reportedly then indicated that should Ukraine join NATO, the state may cease to exist. Russia would then tear off Crimea and eastern Ukraine from the rest of the country. Six years later it appeared Russia was doing precisely this.
“To the Brink – and Back”: German Delegation at the 2018 Munich Security Conference, Munich 16–18 February, 2018