The Daily Populous Thursday December 25th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by united24media.com and submitted by UNITED24Media

As far back as 2001, Russian leader Vladimir Putin told former US President George W. Bush that Ukraine supposedly belonged to Russia and had been transferred by Soviet party officials, according to transcript of the Putin–Bush conversation released by the US National Security Archive.

At their first meeting in June 2001 in Slovenia, Putin delivered what was described as a “brief history lecture” to Bush, offering his own interpretation of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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“What really happened? Soviet good will changed the world, voluntarily. And Russians gave up thousands of square kilometers of territory, voluntarily. Unheard of. Ukraine, part of Russia, for centuries given away. Kazakhstan, given away. The Caucasus too. Hard to imagine, and done by party bosses,” Putin said.

In response, Bush told his Russian counterpart that he viewed Russia as part of the West rather than an adversary and encouraged Putin to “redefine the new threats coming from those that hate America” and may hate Russia as well.

Putin also raised the issue of Russia’s possible membership in NATO, saying Moscow felt “left out” by being excluded from the Alliance.

“In 1954, the Soviet Union applied to join NATO. I have the document. NATO gave a negative answer with four specific reasons: the lack of an Austrian settlement, the lack of a German settlement, the totalitarian grip on Eastern Europe, and need for Russia to cooperate with the UN disarmament process. Now all these conditions have been met. Perhaps Russia could be an ally,” Putin told the former US president.

Earlier, Vladimir Putin said he felt an urge to continue the war against Ukraine even as he claimed Russia was seeking to end the fighting through negotiations on its own terms, The Moscow Times reported.

The outlet quoted Putin as saying, “Our hands itch,” and adding, “We are ready to go further and finish off this vermin.”

johncandy1812 on December 25th, 2025 at 10:57 UTC »

Sounds like Trump talking about Greenland or Canada. It is why this kind of rhetoric should be taken very seriously.

Nick_Strong on December 25th, 2025 at 10:43 UTC »

The West needs to stop viewing Russia through a Western lens. Russia will never change. It's an imperialist state that's eternally hungry for new territories and doesn't care how it gets them. It has never accepted its defeat in the Cold War and will keep trying to reclaim its former sphere of influence. Russia cannot be turned into an ally. Nothing will change after Putin is gone, because Russian imperialism is much older than him. And unlike in 2001, Russia is no longer pretending to be a somewhat Europeanized country. It now openly demands that Europe and the US submit to its imperialist demands as a precondition for any normalization of relations. The West can either keep deluding itself that Russia can be fixed or fully support a true ally like Ukraine and provide it with the means to defeat Russia. Unless the West wants Russia to remain a constant pain in the ass, always probing how far it can go in its hostility toward Europe, it will choose the latter option.

PanneKopp on December 25th, 2025 at 10:40 UTC »

of course he always wanted to get back the influence about whole former USSR, and he still insists on