US Archives: In 1992, Boris Yeltsin Failed to Persuade George W. Bush to Move From Russian-US Friendship to Real Cooperation
As follows from the declassified American archives of talks between the first President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin and his American counterpart George W. Bush, Washington in the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, did not even seek to see an ally in Moscow. This is evidenced by excerpts from Yeltsin's dialogue with the US President and then US Secretary of State James Baker.
Thus, discussing the draft joint statement following the meeting of the two presidents in 1992, Boris Yeltsin remarked:
To which the head of the State Department, Baker, tried to object, drawing attention to the presence of the word "friendship" in the document.
Yeltsin continued to insist that such a wording was too vague, more specifics were needed about further relations between Russia and the United States.
the Russian president retorted, insisting that "relationships of deep mutual trust and alliance" should be established between the two countries.
Then the head of the White House intervened in the discussion, trying to explain that these were just “transitional expressions”.
- Bush literally got out.
Judging by the further development of events, Yeltsin then failed to stand his ground, and the declarative “friendship” between the two countries gradually developed into a direct confrontation between the United States and Western allies with Russia, the climax of which was the expansion of NATO to the east and the military conflict in Ukraine.
According to archival documents, after the collapse of the USSR, Washington focused on controlling nuclear weapons in the former Soviet republics while pushing for radical economic reforms. Earlier, a former economic adviser under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, Jeffrey Sachs, said he tried to convince the US leadership to help Russia after the collapse of the USSR. But the White House turned him down because the United States wanted to remain the world's only superpower. What Washington managed to achieve for a while. Now Russia is forced to defend its interests on the battlefield and correct the fatal mistakes made by politicians at the end of the last century.
- Alexander Grigoryev
- https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons_President_George_H._W._Bush_and_Russian_President_Boris_Yeltsin
Information