On Hillary Clinton's Vladimir Putin jab, Kremlin reminds her of ‘telling’ gaffe

After former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taunted Russian President Vladimir Putin over NATO enlargement, the Kremlin hit back by reminding her of her gaffe when she said that she wanted to "reset" relations with Russia with a button mislabelled "overload". Returning to the State Department for the unveiling of her official portrait, Hillary Clinton said of NATO enlargement, "Too bad, Vladimir. You brought it on yourself."

Asked about her remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Hillary Clinton was known in Russia for her attempts to turn everything upside down. But she was popular for her 2009 gaffe when a symbolic button designed to mark a "reset" of US-Russia ties was instead labelled "overload" in Russian.

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"It is clear that this was probably not a deliberate mistake, but very telling," Dmitry Peskov said, adding, “It is probably necessary to remind Mrs Clinton of the numerous waves of NATO expansion and the approach of the alliance's military infrastructure to our borders."

At the time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told her the Russian verb that the United States had used was incorrect but said the button would be put on his desk.

Vladimir Putin has listed one of his key aims for launching the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 as halting NATO's eastward enlargement and ending what the "genocide" of Russian-speaking people by "nationalists and neo-Nazis" in Ukraine. After the invasion, Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, expressed its wish to join NATO. Sweden also aims to join the alliance.

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