Russian President Vladimir Putin once raised the issue of the country's possible accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but Washington was clearly nervous about the idea, according to a Tuesday report by the RIA Novosti news agency.
In a released clip of an interview with American film director Oliver Stone, Putin recalled that he inquired about Russia joining the alliance when then U.S. President Bill Clinton visited Moscow in 2000.
"During the meeting I said: 'Let's consider an option that Russia might join NATO,'" Putin recalled, "Clinton said 'Why not?' But the U.S. delegation got very nervous."
"Why did our partner get nervous? Because if Russia joins NATO, it will always have a voice. We would not allow us to be manipulated. But our U.S. friends do not even allow a thought about this," Putin said in the interview with Stone.
Such disclosures were from a series of interviews with Putin by Stone in 2015-17. The full content is scheduled to be shown in the United States beginning Monday.
Putin also said in the interview that the United States is "using terrorists" to wobble the domestic political situation in Russia, and what happened in Chechnya was an example of U.S. meddling.
"The Cold War is in the past. We have transparent relations with the whole world, and of course we were counting on some support, but instead we saw that the U.S. special services are supporting the terrorists," he said.
Unlike some other countries, Russia has no habit of interfering in the internal political processes of other countries, said Putin.
