Who would have though that our dear Jens Stoltenberg is a Putin apologist; quote:
“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second-class membership. We rejected that.
So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.”
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Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”
So no, other than a throw away comment they made no move whatsoever to join NATO.
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That’s the Soviet Union.
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Another throwaway comment and it even says that Clinton had no issue if they wanted to join NATO
Swing and a miss my friend.
https://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/98-00/davydov.pdf
In December 1991 Russia’s deputy prime-minister Gennady Burbulis visited NATO’s headquarters and was received by the Secretary General of the Alliance Manfred Worner. Among the problems they discussed was the point concerning Russia’s entry into NATO. This idea was supported then by vice-president Alexander Rutskoy, head of the government Egor Gaidar, Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Kozyrev.
It’s a far more complex situation than a throwaway comment once. Even still, you need to explain why they rejected the Soviet Union, as your conjecture is that NATO has no reason not to accept new members.
