US could have turned Russia into a regular, docile client state by dragging it into the EU in the 1990s, Sergey Shoigu has claimed
The US and its allies missed an opportunity to neutralize Russia by fully embracing it in the 1990s, Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu believes.
In an interview with Rossiya-24 channel aired on Tuesday, the former defense minister recalled how in 1994 then-President Boris Yeltsin told his US counterpart, Bill Clinton, that “Russia has to be the first country to join NATO.”
“If at that point they fast-tracked us into the European Union… I believe we would have lost our sovereignty by today. The resources and natural deposits that our country has would have been largely redistributed and snatched,” Shoigu said.
Russia was in a deep financial hole in the mid 1990s and relied on foreign aid to remain afloat, so it would have willingly gone into the Western fold, if offered, the official argued. Shoigu recalled…