Bill Clinton and Vladimir Putin in Japan in 2000. AP Former President Bill Clinton once praised Vladimir Putin's "enormous potential" in a phone call with then-Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, according to new transcripts of their phone conversations released by Clinton's presidential library.

"We're trying to resolve this bilateral issue with Russia and kind of get this Chechnya thing resolved," Clinton told Blair on October 13, 1999, referring to Russia's air campaign over Chechnya in August 1999 that escalated into the Second Chechen War.

"Putin has enormous potential, I think," Clinton continued. "I think he's very smart and thoughtful. I think we can do a lot of good with him."

Clinton went on to espouse some skepticism about Putin's intentions.

"I think he is a guy with a lot of ability and ambitions for the Russians," he told Blair. "His intentions are generally honorable and straightforward, but he just hasn't made up his mind yet. He could get squishy on democracy."

Putin served as prime minister of Russia from 1999-2000 after serving 16 years as an officer in the KGB — the main security agency in the Soviet Union that was later succeeded by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB). He became president in 2000, just as Clinton was wrapping up his time in office.

More recently, in a 2014 interview, Clinton spoke about Putin's patriotism with respect to Russia, but said the country's involvement in Ukraine was a "very dangerous situation."

"He is highly intelligent, deeply, deeply patriotic in terms of Russia, but he sees it more in terms of the greatness of the state and the country than what happens to ordinary Russians,” Clinton told Fareed Zakaria in March 2014, shortly after Russia annexed Crimea.

“The one thing I will say about him is he was always pretty transparent," Clinton said. "He never pretended to be what he wasn’t. ... If he wants to keep pushing the envelope and going in now to eastern Ukraine, I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a very dangerous situation and it’s unnecessary."

The transcripts between Clinton and Blair were released shortly after Clinton hit the campaign trail earlier this week for his wife, 2016 Democratic presidential front-runner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) meets U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton upon her arrival at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Vladivostok September 8, 2012. REUTERS/Mikhail Metzel Hillary Clinton was a key player in President Barack Obama's "reset" policy with Russia, which aimed to cool tensions with the nation following its 2008 invasion of Georgia, a former Soviet republic.

Still, she noted in a CBS interview in 2014 that she "was among the most skeptical of Putin" during her time in the State Department, "in part because I thought he had never given up on his vision of bringing 'Mother Russia' back to the forefront."

"I think that what may have happened is that both the United States and Europe were really hoping for the best from Putin as a returned president, and I think we've been quickly, unfortunately, disabused of those hopes," she added.

This post has been updated to add additional comments from the Clinton presidential library's transcripts.