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Russia would have joined NATO if the United States had proposed it at the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s mandate in the Kremlin, the Russian President announced in an interview with Tucker Carlston. Putin recalls asking then US President Bill Clinton in 2000: “Do you think that if Russia asked to join NATO, it would happen?” and he said, “that’s interesting, I think so.” But in the evening, when I saw him again for dinner he specified: “I spoke to my parents, now it’s not possible”. “If he had said yes, the process of rapprochement would have begun and it would have happened eventually, if we had seen a sincere desire on the part of our partners,” Putin added.