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- Fiona Hill in a new interview with NYT Magazine said Bush ignored her advice on Georgia and Ukraine’s NATO bids.
- She warned Bush that supporting their NATO ambitions could be problematic and provoke Russia.
- Bush publicly supported them joining the alliance in 2008. Russia has since fought wars with both countries.
In February 2008, roughly 14 years before Russia launched an unprovoked war in Ukraine, Fiona Hill met with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in the Oval Office and advised them against supporting the NATO aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia.
Bush ultimately ignored this advice, publicly championing adding both former Soviet republics to the alliance in a move that was met with opposition by key NATO allies and that enraged Russia leaders.
Hill was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia for the National Intelligence Council at the time, and warned Bush that backing the NATO bids of Kyiv and Tbilisi could be problematic and viewed as a provocation by Russian President Vladimir Putin, she told New York Times Magazine in a new interview, offering previously unreported details.
“So, you’re telling me you’re opposed to freedom and democracy,” Cheney said in response to Hill’s counsel, per the Times, before grabbing his things and leaving the meeting.
Bush told Hill that the vice president was just “yanking your chain,” and asked her to continue “go on with what you were saying.”
Despite Hill’s warnings, Bush seemingly thought he’d be able to convince other NATO members that adding Georgia and Ukraine to the alliance would be beneficial. “I like it when diplomacy is tough,” he told Hill, she recalled to the Times.
Bush did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider. Moscow launched its military assault against Ukraine on February 24, with Putin saying the country represented a threat to Russia despite the fact he has been the sole source of aggression.
Putin said Russia was aiming for the demilitarization of Ukraine and claimed it was being led by Nazis, a baseless assertion that experts warn is a euphemism for the Kremlin’s desire to topple the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signaled that Kyiv is willing to adopt neutral status — meaning it would agree to never join NATO — as a possible concession to Russia amid negotiations that have so far failed to stop the fighting. The Russian assault on Ukraine has involved the ruthless targeting of civilians, leading to widespread allegations of war crimes.
At an April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Bush said, "NATO should welcome Georgia and Ukraine into the Membership Action Plan," adding, "The new NATO we are building is not designed to defend against Russia. The Cold War is over. Russia is not our enemy. We're working toward a new security relationship with Russia."
Russia has long made its opposition to NATO's eastward expansion extremely clear, and in 2008 vowed to do everything it could to prevent Ukraine and Georgia from joining. Putin attended the NATO summit that year, telling Bush that Ukraine was "not even a country."
In the end, NATO in 2008 did not set Georgia and Ukraine on the formal path toward joining NATO, but did say that both countries would eventually become members. But to this day, neither are part of the alliance. "It was the worst of all possible worlds," Hill told the Times of results of the 2008 summit.
And in August 2008 — just months after Bush forcefully pushed for the two countries to become part of NATO — Russia invaded Georgia. The war ended in a matter of days but Russian troops continue to occupy roughly 20% of Georgia's territory — the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Russia would also go on to invade Ukraine in 2014, annexing Crimea in the process, and began supporting rebels in a war against Ukrainian forces that same year.
In the lead-up to Russia's more recent invasion of Ukraine in late February, Russia routinely blamed NATO for the tensions and complained of its eastward expansion. Though Georgia and Ukraine are not NATO members, many former Soviet republics became part of the alliance following the end of the Cold War — including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania.
Putin said NATO "swindled" Russia. He's claimed Moscow was "given promises not to move NATO infrastructure to the East, not a single inch." Experts dispute Putin's claims, saying he's sought to rewrite history to justify Russian aggression against a neighbor trying to boost its ties to the West.
"[Putin] claims that NATO took advantage of Russian weakness after the collapse of the Soviet Union to enlarge to its east, in violation of promises allegedly made to Moscow by Western leaders. But no such promises were made," Steven Pifer, the US ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000, wrote in 2014 for Brookings Institution.
Though Ukraine is not part of NATO, many alliance members have provided Kyiv with security assistance — including lethal aid. That support has been ramped up since Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in late April, and NATO has also bolstered its presence in Eastern Europe. But the alliance has also been clear that it does not intend to send troops into Ukraine to fight Russia, and for this reason NATO has declined calls from Kyiv to set up a no-fly zone.
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