Vladimir Putin gave interesting information to the American journalist Tucker Carlson in an interview he gave him, which was published on Thursday evening.

He says that during a meeting in the Kremlin with outgoing US President Bill Clinton, he asked him: “Do you think if Russia asked to join NATO, would that happen?”, according to Sky News.

Putin says he was told: “You know, it’s interesting. I think so”.

The Russian president says that when the two leaders met for dinner later that evening, Clinton told him, “I wonder, ‘You know, I talked to my team, no, it’s not possible now.’

“You can ask him. I think he will watch our interview and confirm,” Putin added.

Asked by Tucker Carlson if he would join NATO, Putin said: “If he said yes, the rapprochement process would begin, and eventually it could happen if we saw the sincere desire of our partners. But that didn’t happen.”

He also expressed his displeasure with NATO’s eastward expansion.

“The promise was that NATO would not expand to the east. But it happened five times. There were five waves of expansion. I endured all this. We tried to convince them. I told them: please don’t do this,” he says.