Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the Moscow might have joined the NATO in the early days of his presidency in the year 2000 if the US had agreed to it.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance of 31 member states – 29 European and two North American (US and Canada).

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“Well, I became president in 2000. I thought, okay, the Yugoslav issue is over, but we should try to restore relations. Let’s re-open the door that Russia had tried to go through,” Putin said in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson.

“At a meeting here in the Kremlin with the outgoing President Bill Clinton, right here in the next room, I said to him, I asked him: ‘Bill, do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, do you think it would happen?’ Suddenly he said, ‘you know, it’s interesting. I think so.’ But in the evening, when we met for dinner, he said: ‘You know, I’ve talked to my team, no, it’s not possible now’,” he added.

Carlson further pressed Putin on if he would have joined NATO had the former US president said, “yes” at the time.

Putin answered that it “might have happened”, but that he was not “bitter” or resentful that it did not happen.

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