Fiona Hill: What Does Trump See in Putin? | Foreign Affairs Interview

Basically, what Trump always wanted to be was the big strong guy in front of Putin, and he does that by beating upon the people he can beat upon. And it's obvious to Putin he's doing that. Let's just be frank, it's pretty obvious because it's obvious to everybody else as well.

No, well, thanks so much, Dan. I'm really glad to be here with you.

Speed. You just said seven weeks. I thought, gosh, has it only been seven weeks? Yes, it's definitely the speed of things. I mean, there was a lot of things that I did anticipate, but honestly, I will confess, I didn't expect it to happen this fast and this furious.

Well, on Trump's part, it was sort of vintage Trump and very reflective of his feelings of antipathy towards Zelensky the person and towards Ukraine. I mean, I think what was very telling was that he doesn't want to be associated with Ukraine in any way, basically telling them they had no cards, that it was the United States that had puffed up Ukraine and Zelensky himself to be a tough guy, that they were losers, you know, basically had the losing hand. And he was basically, you know, telling them that they should sort of give it up already, and also making it very clear that any undertaking or any agreement that had already been made with Zelensky in Ukraine by the United States, by previous presidents, was null and void. Because I think the thing to bear in mind when you're watching all of this was Zelensky was already walking into an interaction that wasn't going to go favorably for him. And I think in terms of Zelensky and his whole team, they didn't do sufficient preparation for this. And in part, it's not entirely their fault because I don't think they fully understood what they were dealing with. Trump was basically telling Zelensky that he had to make a personal agreement, in effect a treaty of friendship with him. That was the rare earths, you know, the raw materials agreement. I don't think Zelensky fully understood that this was not just a sort of a continuation of agreements with the United States and with previous presidents, but that this was something to cement the deal with Trump himself personally, and that this was all very personal. And you can see that where Zelensky really went awry, there was two different things that went wrong. First of all, he shouldn't have been speaking in English, and what he should have done was, you know, slow the whole thing down and use his Ukrainian interpreter. And I think in future they need to have a really good interpreter. Perhaps they even need to assign a special envoy in the way that Trump has done this, you know, to basically engage somebody who was, you know, kind of capable of holding their own in these kinds of environments. Because I don't think Zelensky, on the one hand, really understood where Trump was coming from, and on the other hand, didn't really understand the way that everything was being phrased. It was moving very fast, and even for, you know, kind of a native English speaker, it would have been hard, you know, to keep on the game. His English is good, but it's not, you know, he's not native. And that's one thing in diplomacy, you don't have an interaction, no matter how good you are in your non-native language. So that's kind of, again, a problem. There was also a lot of the people around Trump and the team around Kellogg, and obviously we heard that also from Lindsey Graham, Senator Graham. They were very angry with Zelensky because they said that they'd told him already what he was expected to do, which was go in, thank the president profusely, sign the deal, and get out, and do something that was going to be good for television, not in the terrible way in which it played out, but in the way of kind of performatively thanking the president. And he didn't do that because, again, I don't think he fully understood, because, again, they were explaining to him in their terms. They understand how Trump operates, and Zelensky, you know, absolutely doesn't. And where it really went wrong was when Zelensky was trying to remind Trump of two things. First of all, the way that Vladimir Putin operates, which Trump didn't really want to hear. And secondly, that there were commitments already made to Ukraine and to Zelensky by previous presidents. And that's when Trump essentially lost it. He basically said, those people don't count for anything. No one respected them. They were weak. They were useless. People respect me. This is with me. So this is a hyper-personalized set of interactions, and it's not really about the team. It's not really about the people around Trump. It's just the way that Zelensky was supposed to behave with Trump himself. And it was ahead of the State of the Union, there was all these compilation videos that had been made on behalf of Trump by his press office of people thanking President Trump, from, you know, hostages that had been released, you know, to other people thanking him for all the things that he's done that he could refer to. And I think Zelensky was supposed to be fitting into the same frame, and he did not get that message. He genuinely thought he was still negotiating for some kinds of security guarantees. He didn't realize he was making a personal treaty, perhaps not even really of friendship, but of some kind of undertaking with President Trump himself personally.

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of the same things I've just said about the interaction with Zelensky that would hold true for this one, but perhaps on the other side of the ledger, Trump isn't really all that prepared for his meetings with Putin. And interpretation and his view is kind of meaningless. And having people who actually really understand the situation, who Putin is, and, you know, what Russia is about, is key as well. Because although it's a hyper-personalized setup in Russia as well, Putin's, you know, the main guy. He's where all decision-making begins and ends with. He also does have a system around him. He is a product of the deep state. He actually likes the state in Russia. He uses it. And he's got a whole number of state functionaries like Ushakov, his presidential advisor, Lavrov, the foreign minister, Kirill Dmitriev, who many of us have seen active in these negotiations with the United States, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund, who for many people is certainly not a household name and not somebody that people were kind of expecting to see. And all of these people have been in the Russian system for years. Kirill Dmitriev's wife is close to Putin's daughter. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the sovereign wealth fund, is Harvard-trained, went to business school, he's worked at Goldman Sachs. His English is impeccable. Same with Ushakov and Lavrov. Lavrov, of course, has been foreign minister since time immemorial, it seems, certainly longer than seven weeks, and also then the Russian representative at the UN. These guys know what they're doing. And again, they speak impeccable English, and they know all their talking points. They know what country they work for. They know how their system operates. They know all the externalities as well. They've got a kind of a complete picture of the field of play. And I think, you know, what we're sort of seeing with President Trump, which I saw the first time around, he stays fixated on the one guy himself, on Putin. He sees other people, the intermediaries around him, you know, basically as just sort of conduits to Putin or some ways of just sort of facilitating interaction. Certainly interpreters, certainly his own staff, he doesn't pay any attention to. It's all about being able to sit down with Putin. And when you're not prepared and when you don't know where the other person is coming from, it's just about his interaction, then of course you're going to be taking on the talking points of Russia because the only peer he sees in this relationship, it's certainly not Whitcoff, it's not Rubio, for certain. Absolutely not. He's a secretary. He's the Secretary of State, but for Trump, he's absolutely a secretary. He's just a member of staff. Waltz, it's the same thing. Whitcoff might be a billionaire or millionaire and a kind of an ambassador and, you know, had a business role before, but again, he's just brokering a deal. That's how Trump saw Rex Tillerson before, or H.R. McMaster, or John Bolton, or any of the various people who were working for him previously. They were nothing in their own right. They were just facilitators and conduits. And it's the same with a translator. He's not listening really to the words. He's just trying to get the vibe. The very first time I was in one of the phone calls with Putin, I was listening very carefully to the Russian because the interpreters don't always capture everything. They don't capture the nuances. And particularly when it's the Russian interpreter who's translating into a language that's also not their native language, all kinds of things are missing. And Trump said, what a great, what a great conversation. I thought, actually, not really. There was all kinds of menace in what Putin had said. He chooses his words very carefully. Many times when Putin and Trump are interacting, Putin's actually making fun of him. It's just, it's completely lost in the translation. I can give lots of episodes of this, or he's egging him on and urging him on to something because he's trying to kind of see how he will react. And the translation, you know, smooths over all of that. That context is absolutely missing. And he doesn't do a readout afterwards. And, you know, we heard, for example, that Whitcoff spent several hours one-on-one with Putin. Was anyone translating? Was Whitcoff making notes in real time, or was he trying to remember, you know, what was said afterwards? All of this is amateur hour because it kind of means that you're not really fully cognizant of what it is that the Russians have said beyond, you know, what you've taken on board from their talking points.

Well, I think it's a real mixed picture. I mean, as you said, there's been quite a bit of euphoria in Russia. In fact, they think that they've, you know, walked into a fairy tale, you know, kind of where, you know, there's all these Russian fairy tales where somebody finds a golden fish or a firebird, or, you know, it's like the genie and the lamp kind of equivalent, and all their wishes come true. And in many respects, that's what's happened. Putin wanted Ukraine to capitulate. It looks like that's what Trump is trying to facilitate for him. Putin wanted to see a rift between the United States and NATO and the United States and all its European allies, and Trump's doing that in spades, and also with Canada and Mexico and pretty much everybody else as well. The Russians would have loved the United States in every other interaction to just take on their talking points without any, you know, kind of pushback, and that's exactly what's happened as well. And the thing is, what we've done here is we've just gone completely over to the Russian side of the position, which is not necessarily good for Russia either. And I think that that's kind of also creating, you know, some apprehension in Moscow. What does this mean? Does this, you know, actually mean that the United States has completely shifted its position? I mean, Trump, you know, certainly has been of many of these views all the way along because he's a strongman. He sees Putin as a peer, as a fellow strongman. He wants to rule the United States in the way that he thinks, you know, that Russia is ruled by Putin. But Putin also himself is beholden to public opinion. There's also kind of like a whole series of war bloggers and nationalists and others, you know, who are also trying to hold Putin's feet to the fire. And there's also kind of, you know, a lot of anxiety about whether the United States and Trump can be trusted to stick to their word. Because the first time around, you know, Putin also was hopeful, and all the Russians were very hopeful. You know, they're popping champagne corks when Trump got elected because, you know, they certainly didn't want to see Hillary Clinton elected in 2016. But they didn't get what they wanted out of it. Trump himself keeps saying, you know, I was tougher on Russia than anyone else. Well, that was also not true. But in fact, it was the team of people around him who, once, you know, Russia started doing various things, basically bewared Trump that they needed to push back or he would look weak, you know. But Trump has never believed that Russia has been interfering in the political space, and so he wants to now take, you know, Putin at his face value, irrespective of all the things that, you know, kind of Russia has actually done. And in a way, now the Russians are kind of feeling that maybe they're the dog that caught the car, and so they're not really sure where this is going to go. And in fact, I've got colleagues who've been taking part in some of these track twos, you know, that have been happening in Geneva and elsewhere, and one was taken aside by one of the Russians saying that they're worried that this would lead to a crisis because Trump will also expect now that Putin will bring peace, that peace will break out all over, and that Putin actually is perhaps not in a position to do that. So let's just play the scenario. Ukraine completely capitulates. Trump, you know, has been saying maybe there'll be a country, maybe there won't be a country. So Russia gets the control of the territory that it holds. Maybe it gets control of the territory it claims because it doesn't hold all of the territory that it claims to have annexed. Then what? You really think that the Ukrainians are going to put down all their arms? Is Trump going to force them to do so? Is it not going to be kind of rear guard? You know, Ukraine is a failed state on the borders of Russia as well as on the borders of Europe. It isn't necessarily going to be, you know, something that Russia wants. And once the facade of a U.S.-Russia confrontation is stripped away, this becomes what it always has been, which is a Russian assault on Europe, the second, you know, largest land war in Europe after World War II, the first one being Chechnya, where Russia invaded its own territory and created absolute chaos. And effectively, what you will now see is that Europe is in a war with Russia over Ukraine because this is existential to European security. And it may not be what Hungary thinks or Slovakia thinks, but certainly what a heck of a lot of other European countries think. And that means that China, North Korea, and Iran are also engaging in a war against Europe. They joined it because they thought that they could take potshots at the United States. But this becomes extraordinarily complicated because Russia might be able to, and Putin may be able to have their discussions with Trump, but it doesn't resolve the question of European security because Trump's saying, I want nothing to do with European security. They're on their own. So actually, this becomes really complicated, and so does the question of proliferation as well. Lots of people are talking about this now. Basically, what Putin has done is make it much more likely that European countries and other neighbors like Japan, South Korea, you know, for example, will be rushing to get a nuclear weapon because the United States, along with Russia and the United Kingdom, gave Ukraine assurances, guarantees, as far as Ukrainians were concerned, that when they gave up nuclear weapons that they had inherited from the Soviet Union, you know, back in the 1990s, the ones in Belarus and Kazakhstan gave those weapons back to Moscow to be dismantled, that there would be guaranteed that nothing bad would ever happen to them, certainly that they wouldn't be invaded by Russia. And that's exactly what's happened. So the lesson to everyone else is you're going to get clobbered by a nuclear power. And Trump wants to have nuclear negotiations with Putin. Well, he might be able to do that, but he might have also presided over the proliferation of nuclear weapons to many more countries than have them already.

Well, because there are multiple battlefields. I mean, it is actually true, contrary to what President Trump and others think, that Russia hasn't done as well as one would expect on the battlefield because, you know, it still hasn't, you know, taken over the whole of Ukraine, which was definitely the goal when Putin first moved in with his special military operation. Now, on that particular battlefield, Trump's actually Putin's best hope because Trump, again, as he said in the Oval Office to Zelensky, you know, we're the ones who've made you a tough guy. If we take away our support, you're finished, you know, so you need to get to the table. While in actual fact, Ukraine's still got some fight in it. You know, we saw these drone attacks on Moscow, and we've seen Europeans rallying around. Now, admittedly, they can't compensate for the United States anytime soon, and everybody knows that, but it doesn't mean that Ukraine's fighting spirit is completely gone. And again, there's been lots of calculations made by very smart, you know, military analysts that it would take something like 118 years for Russia to take over Ukraine at the pace that it's going. And if Ukraine really wanted to dig in and reinforce the lines of contact, it actually could with some assistance. And perhaps that's something that they should have done before, but Ukraine never wanted to give up the idea that it might be able to incrementally take back, you know, some of its territory. But I think, you know, Ukrainians are seeing the reality of the situation right now. But the other thing that Putin was really relying on was the broader psychological battlefield, the broader political battlefield as well. And psychologically, he's given everybody the impression that he's won. He's certainly given Trump the impression that he's won, and many other people besides that as well. And politically, he was hoping for a change in government in many different countries, just like Vice President Vance seemed to be hoping for. He was hoping that the AfD would win in Germany. Well, they haven't. I mean, the CDU has, but again, in a difficult situation where there'll have to be a coalition government. But Friedrich Merz, the head of the CDU, the Christian Democratic Union in Germany, has started to, you know, be pretty forceful in the things that he said about Russia and also about the United States and its stance. In the United Kingdom, in July, it was the Labour Party that won, and the Labour Party have actually been, you know, quite forward-leaning in terms of their continued support for Ukraine, you know, based on the previous Conservative governments and Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak and all the other intervening prime ministers. There's been actually a continuation of support for Ukraine. Similarly in France at the top level of Macron, but very importantly in countries like Poland, the Baltic states, all the Nordic countries, and Sweden and Finland are now part of NATO. And Sweden and Finland actually have real resources. They're bordering countries with Russia. So some of the things that Putin was holding out for haven't exactly happened, but Putin still thinks that he can manipulate the situation. And this is where getting back to what we were talking about before about where Trump may be a mixed bag. He may not like it that Trump has become basically antagonistic towards Europe as well, because in Putin's view, just as in Trump's view, Europe is a set of vassal states. The European Union, Trump said, was basically created to rip off the United States. He wants to see the end of the European Union. Putin sees the European Union as formidable in its ability to aggregate economic potential and financial wherewithal, which is actually we're seeing right now with the EU talking about putting up billions in defense spending and also talking about doing that in a NATO context so that countries like Norway, the UK, Switzerland, and also Turkey, you know, could be involved in defense spending. And it seems like this has been done precisely in reaction to the US, not just in reaction to Putin, which, you know, suggests that Europe has agency and other countries have agency as well. And so Putin may have to do other things to maintain his position. And then the question is, what's going on inside of the domestic battlefield? Now, obviously, he's eliminated all opposition, but there are these nationalist bloggers. There are people who, you know, want to see the war pursued to its final solution in their view, which is the subjugation of Ukraine and then from there, subjugation of other countries to make sure they don't go their own way. They will also be keeping Putin in their crosshair, which, of course, we already saw with Prigozhin. We've already forgotten that there was an insurgency, there was an attempt, you know, to change the tide in Russia. And if it becomes more clear about the huge cost that Putin has incurred and that maybe that isn't acceptable to others, you know, things may change as well for him. It's a price, which is different from a cost, right? A cost may be something seen as negative, but for him, it's a price worth paying if he has success. And success is not 100% guaranteed at this particular juncture.

Well, that's the problem, isn't it? That's what Zelensky was trying to get at in the Oval Office to no avail, you know, pointing out the armistice equivalent ceasefires, just like we're seeing in Gaza, with kind of difficulties of how hard it is once you get beyond just getting the fighting stopped. The big issues have to be resolved. Things are much more difficult. The devil's always in those very big details. So getting an armistice, and the Ukrainians are proposing right now at air and at sea. And you also got to remember that Ukrainians have wiped out a third of the Russian Black Sea Fleet without having a fleet of their own. They've done that also with drones and basically autonomous vehicles for weapons. So the Ukrainians have been quite effective in that regard. And we have the World War I type front line, which is actually very difficult. And it's not just a war of attrition. It's dynamic. It's back and forth. But I think it's actually quite difficult for Putin to effect a kind of a ceasefire and then take it from there because, I mean, he obviously wants then things that it's not in Trump's wherewithal to hand over. And I don't know whether Trump can actually force the Ukrainians to give up territory that they hold rather than that Russia holds. Then Putin has also made it very clear Russia's terms are pretty extensive, which is also no army of conceivable size that could defend itself on the part of Ukraine, not joining NATO. And actually NATO may be the least of things at the moment because there are other military bilateral treaties that Ukraine can avail itself of with a whole host of other countries and other arrangements that it doesn't actually need NATO, to be frank, at this particular point to defend itself. And also the United States is pulling back from that, so it diminishes, you know, that value of the military relationship with the United States. It used to be enshrined within NATO plus the nuclear umbrella, but Russia obviously has said, uh-uh, you know, we don't want to be talking about new European security arrangements. They don't want any European troops in Ukraine, which is European territory, and this is all about European security. They would like to have the US pull back, but they can't force Poland to pull out Polish troops from Polish soil, or Finns to pull out Finnish troops in Finnish soil, or Baltic states to pull out their own troops, or Canadians, Germans, and the UK forces who are prepositioned forward deployed in the Baltic states from pulling out. So there's all kinds of things going on here. And the Russians are saying they want the root causes of this conflict resolved, which for them is they want a sphere of influence recognized. And the United States might say, yeah, great, okay, we recognize your ability to have a sphere of influence in Europe. But what about Europe? You know, they have agency. You can't just infantilize the Europeans, you know, just basically say, right, we're not with you anymore, you're on your own, and then expect them to just kind of sit about. There is an assumption in the United States a lot of the time, I have to say, that the Europeans aren't capable of anything. Well, what are they talking about? You know, they're talking about what, France and Germany maybe? JD Vance is random countries that haven't fought a war. Well, JD Vance has probably not been to Finland and has not seen the front lines there, probably not been to Norway, Sweden, you know, perhaps he has, but I don't think he's, you know, kind of fully processed it. Has he been to Poland and, you know, seeing how the Poles are trying to build themselves up? The Turks have certainly fought wars and they're part of, you know, NATO. The Turks have been in Syria, you know, recently and also kind of involved in Iraq. And frankly, again, as Europeans keep pointing out, the only time that Article 5 was invoked was on behalf of the United States after 9/11. And European troops, including Georgians and many others who were not part of NATO, went to support the United States in Afghanistan and also in Iraq. So there's a lot going on here. And although the Russians have been very clear on what they want, I do not believe that Trump has the ability to give them everything that they want and to force other people to give up things because everything is going to be a concession for Ukraine and everything's also going to be a concession for Europe. And, you know, again, a ceasefire is one thing, but resolving all of the issues on this is something else. And it may be that lots of Americans may believe that Russia has a right to a sphere of influence, but I think a lot of Europeans certainly don't believe that, particularly when it comes to them being in the sphere of influence. And also what Trump has done...

In terms of threatening Canada and Greenland, which people should take very seriously because I'm pretty convinced he means it, and then also, you know, the pressure on Panama, basically showing countries a very different view of the United States. There's a genuine rupture in the relationship between the United States and its allies at this point, not just European allies but say Japan, South Korea, and others, and it's a one-sided rupture. It's basically come from the United States saying it's not going to be an ally anymore, it's going to be America First and really not interested in what happens in the security of other countries.