Translating a material by Alfred Kokh in Faktor (original source: kasparov.ru):
"...In his speech, Putin repeated his now traditional stories about Russia, which twice (in 1954 and 2000) asked to join NATO and was rejected. This much is clear to me: Putin simply cannot grasp the simple fact that NATO is an alliance of democracies. If you are not a democracy, you have no business there. But Putin wants to join all the alliances of the global West while ruling the country like an Arab sheikh. This does not work. And I hope it never works.
Moreover, Russia is not the only country that has been rejected. Take Ukraine, for example. It has applied to join NATO not twice, but 22 times, and has been rejected each time...
Russia has not been accepted into NATO because it plans to attack it. Russia is not accepted because it is neither free nor democratic, because NATO members are not ready to defend it in every situation, because they do not believe that it will be honorable in any conflict with the rest of the Alliance. They do not want to become hostages to the whims, phobias and discontents of an irreplaceable, adventurous ruler whose thinking and value system are too opaque and unpredictable. Or, conversely, too transparent and predictable, which in this case is actually the same thing..."
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