Jesse Watters said Bill Clinton laid the groundwork for the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine Monday on "The Five"

Watters pointed to 1994, only three years after the fall of the Soviet Union, when President Clinton heralded an agreement forged with Kyiv that would eliminate nuclear weapons left on Ukrainian soil by the Soviets.

"How did we get here? Bill Clinton forced the Ukrainians in the early 1990s to give their nukes back to Russia," Watters recalled. "If he had just let the Ukrainians keep the nukes, Russia wouldn’t have gone in – You don’t invade a nuclear power."

"So, I expect a formal apology by Bubba," he quipped, using a noted 90s nickname for President Clinton.

Clinton, an Arkansas Democrat, called the accord struck between Russia, Ukraine and NATO members "a hopeful and historic breakthrough that enhances the security of all three participants."

The agreement prescribed the United States, United Kingdom and Russia to provide security assurances in exchange for its arsenal. Clinton reportedly offered at least $175 million to fund the dismantling of the weapons at the time.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/jesse-watters-bill-clinton-russia-ukraine-tensions

“I think he is a guy with a lot of ability and ambitions for the Russians. His intentions are generally honorable and straightforward, but he just hasn't made up his mind yet. He could get squishy on democracy,”[1]Bill Clinton said of Vladimir Putin in a February 2000 telephone conversation with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Who was Putin? they wondered.

Putin was clearly different from his predecessor Boris Yeltsin. Clinton and Yeltsin clicked immediately – there was mutual sympathy. Putin was “businesslike,” factual and tough – no small talk, no jokes, no spontaneity. Clinton never called him “Vladimir.”

Newly available Clinton Presidential Library files give readers novel insights and fascinating impressions of Putin’s KGB heritage, his manners, his style, his shrewdness and his ways of manipulation. The files are a treasure trove that are available online and include the verbatim transcripts of the six Clinton-Putin meetings between September 1999 and November 2000 as well as records of their telephone conversations.

Today, Putin has been 20 years in power, and Russia’s recent constitutional changes indicate his willingness to stay in charge even longer.[2]All of this was not predictable when he succeeded Boris Yeltsin as Russia’s President on 31 December 1999. As the new millennium began, US-Russia relations were increasingly strained after NATO’s military operation against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War. US-Russian frictions grew further after Russia’s bombing of Chechenya in September 1999 and the subsequent invasion starting in October of that year. Putin used the Chechen war to overtake his domestic rivals in the campaign to replace the ailing President Boris Yeltsin who praised him in a telephone conversation with Clinton in September 1999: “I found out he is a solid man who is kept well abreast of various subjects under his purview. At the same time, he is thorough and strong, very sociable. And he can easily have good relations and contact with people who are his partners.”[3]Yeltsin wanted Putin to become his successor.[4]

https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/174442

https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-met-obama-bush-trump-clinton-us-presidents-2018-7