Top 35 Fiona Hill Quotes

Calling Trump ‘Putin’s puppet’ is a sign of the weakness of the American political system. It appears so weak and fragile that outsiders can actually meddle about in it.

The refugee problem is definitely a disaster for the entire region. Putin – the refugee problem in Chechnya was largely contained inside of Russia itself although there were tens of thousands of Chechens who sought refuge across Europe. Putin wasn’t swayed by that issue when it came to Chechnya.

The whole purpose of Russian propaganda is to show that the U.S. and U.S. politics is filled with hubris and hypocrisy and to show it is not better than anyone else.

Absolutely everything I’ve done – my research, my training, my book – was made possible due to Harvard opening doors and providing me with connections.

Chechens need to be able to develop their own viable political society and regional economy whether they remain part of Russia or not.

Russia has always been very careful to try to balance the interest of the Gulf states and Iran off against each other.

I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine – not Russia – attacked us in 2016.

I can say with confidence that this country has offered for me opportunities I would never have had in England.

For the United States, in particular, the South Caucasus has been a priority since the 1990s.

The capital city of Grozny in Chechnya was reduced completely to rubble, and Putin thought this was worthwhile because it kept the state together.

We have politicized the issue of Russia to a point that we can’t have a sensible conversation about it.

Putin has the ability to advance his interests in many different ways. Sometimes tactical diplomacy can help.

Putin operates like a super PAC, taking advantage of opportunities for negative campaigning. The purpose is to show that the U.S. has no moral authority.

Indeed, for Russia, inconsistency is an integral part of its foreign policy strategy, particularly under Putin.

The problem in Pankisi is an extension of broader problems throughout Georgia. The whole system is based on shady deals. The entire government is corrupt.

Every military scenario that the Russians basically engage in their annual exercises, either on their western or eastern flank, always involved some kind of local revolt pulling in outside forces.

We’ve got ourselves into a situation where government service is somehow seen to be a political act rather than an act of civic duty or of public service.

Stop pyschoanalyzing Putin, and recognize that there is a certain mind set. The West must draw a line under ‘Putinography’ and just get on with it.

Putin’s treatment of Chechnya became a cautionary tale of what would happen to rebels and terrorists – and indeed to entire groups of people – if they threatened the Russian state.

Putin has become the wild card in his own system.

I got a PhD from Harvard and a few years later, there was a girl from Sunderland who hadn’t got into Oxford or Cambridge, even though she’d got perfect A-levels. Harvard asked me to come and recruit her because I was recruited out of university by Harvard – they were trying to show that people could make it.

Few issues better illustrate the limits of the Obama administration’s ‘reset’ with Russia than the crisis in Syria.

Everybody used to talk about Chechnya as a place, in the Russian imperial and Soviet periods, that was essentially governed by extended family and regional networks that substituted for older clan structures. But those networks have been destroyed.

The Russians didn’t invent partisan divides. The Russians haven’t invented racism in the United States. But the Russians understand a lot of those divisions and they understand how to exploit them.

You could say that by standing up to Russia, the U.S. is finally getting some balls.

New ties between Russia and Japan would mark not only a breakthrough in their relations but also a significant shift in Northeast Asia’s political dynamic.

I have worked hard and emigrated to the U.S., and I think of myself as working class but I’m probably not any more.

There’s no prospect that the Russians are going to send Snowden back. Snowden is in the land of spy swaps now. Putin is not going to give this guy up for nothing.

I tend to look at Trump as a real-estate mogul. You look at a building and say, ‘I’m just going to tear that down and build up something new.’ He’s not exactly Mr. Preservationist.

Russia doesn’t want to have a return to the situation where it was the United States and say Israel, making determinations about whether there might be a strike against Iran if the negotiations over the nuclear weapons program weren’t going in a direction that they wanted to.

Japan has good reasons for wanting to transform its relationship with Russia. Tokyo has openly expressed serious fears of a military confrontation with Beijing over China’s claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.

The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016.

Our basic problem is how do we stop the hot war on the ground in Ukraine, and not get into a more and more escalatory relationship with Putin.

So Putin is not the dictator that he’s often accused of being. He has to be very sensitive to public opinion.

The people who run the giant companies and the government are all part of the same crowd.