In 1994, US and Russian Presidents Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin seriously discussed the issue of Russia joining NATO, but European countries, in particular Germany, opposed this.
Secret documents were published by the German publication Der Spiegel, News.Az reports.
The magazine analyzed several confidential documents, including a letter from German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to Clinton, reports from German diplomats in Russia and the United States, and official papers from German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel.
Germany and European countries opposed Clinton's idea of joining Russia to NATO, fearing the loss of "insurance against Russian instability" and believing that there is no place for a "democratic and secure" Moscow in the alliance.
Another reason for the impossibility of implementing this idea was the need to protect the Russian Federation on the border with China and Mongolia, which was "unthinkable." The then German Defense Minister Volker Rühe considered Russia's possible entry into the alliance "evidence of its end."
