[tomder55]

According to his latest attempt at relevance ;Bubba says that he regrets his role in the Budapest memorandum where Ukraine would give up the nukes they inherited with the fall of the Soviet Union .In exchange they were offered vague security protections,. (there was no recourse for violations that was spelled out in the document )

Bubba's State Dept at the time was playing the word games he was known for ; trying to parse the meanings of "security guarantee" and "security assurance"; guarantees meaning a direct military response if the terms were violated .The parties at the table settled on "assurances" . What that meant was anyone's guess. The doc did call for the 'non-violation of these parties' territorial integrity.

Ukraine was reluctant to sign . But Bubba did some arm twisting ,implying that a refusal to sign would damage US -Ukraine relations. Steven Pifer (at the time US Ambassador to Ukraine ) wrote

English draws a distinction between 'guarantee' and 'assurance,' while both words translate into 'guarantee' in Ukrainian and Russian. U.S. officials read for the formal negotiating record a statement to the effect that, whenever 'guarantee' appeared in the Ukrainian and Russian language texts of the Trilateral Statement, it was to be understood in the sense of the English word 'assurance.

05_trilateral_process_pifer.pdf (brookings.edu)

After the US engineered a coup of Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich in 2013 ,Putin saw the memorandum as null and void . He annexed Crimea in 2014.

Bubba said in an interview with Irish broadcaster 'RTE'
"I feel a personal stake because I got them [Ukraine] to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons"

Clinton regrets persuading Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons (rte.ie)

Bubba says he knew in 2011 Putin would invade Ukraine.

I don't recall him saying anything at time. At the time Evita was Sec State . I don't recall her warning of a Putin invasion . Evita and the rest of the emperor's foreign policy team were responsible for the 2013 coup in Ukraine.

For that matter ;and it is all speculation on my part ,how different would the world look today if Bubba had not started the expansion of NATO after "assurances "were made to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand after the German reunification ? NATO expansion began in Bubba's reign .So did the use of NATO force against Russian ally Serbia.