Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin Missed Historic Opportunity
Transcripts from the 1990s show how the U.S. could have helped put Russia on a different course.
Unequal friendship.
Photographer: Dirck Halstead/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
The transcripts of calls and personal conversations between Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, published by the Clinton Presidential Library, reveal a complex relationship. They also pose tantalizing questions about what the world could have been like had the relationship been more equal.
American Russia experts who are listed among the note-takers of the presidential conversations said the freshly declassified documents refute the Kremlin’s narrative of a humiliated, cheated Russia whose assertive comeback under President Vladimir Putin was overdue. For Russian readers, they add substance to the story of victimization.