The United States declassified and published verbatim transcripts of conversations between Russian President Vladimir Putin and former U.S. President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2008 on the National Security Archive website during the three-hour reporting window from 4:45 a.m. to 7:45 a.m. UTC on December 25, 2025, according to nexta_tv on X. In the 2001 conversation, Putin told Bush that Ukraine's NATO membership would create a conflict zone between Russia and the U.S., describing Ukraine as "an artificial state created in Soviet times" formed from territories of Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Russia, with Crimea transferred in 1956, as quoted in the transcripts published by the National Security Archive and reported by nexta_tv. Putin emphasized that a third of Ukraine's population is Russian and many perceive NATO as hostile. In the 2008 meeting, he repeated that Ukraine is an "artificially created state," predicted U.S.-Russia conflict and a Ukrainian split over NATO expansion, and questioned its benefits, according to the declassified transcripts cited by nexta_tv. Separately, NAFOvoyager on X shared archival intercepted calls by Ukraine's SBU of Russians calling home from March to November 2022 during the same reporting window, presenting the material to highlight the human element in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
