What Would Victory Look Like for Putin?

Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove

Guest

Dr. Fiona Hill

Dr. Fiona Hill is a renowned Russia expert who served as a top national security advisor to three American administrations, including as the leading White House official on Russia for President Donald Trump.

Episode Summary

As the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine approaches, and United States support to arm Ukraine fades, One Decision's Sir Richard Dearlove and guest host Jane Ferguson talk to renowned Russia expert Dr. Fiona Hill about what's inside Russian President Vladimir Putin's playbook and how the conflict might ultimately end. Dr. Hill served as a top national security advisor to three American administrations - including famously as the leading White House official on Russia for President Donald Trump. She discusses what victory would look like for Putin, the implications of a Trump return as commander-in-chief.

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Transcript

INTRODUCTION

Ferguson: You're listening to One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices that shape our lives. I'm today's guest host, Jane Ferguson.

Dearlove: And I'm Richard Dearlove, former chief of British intelligence, otherwise known as MI6.

Ferguson: We look at the key strategic choices and decisions that have global impact. We hear from the key decision makers, players, and experts, how they arrive at the choices they face and how they impact us all. Well, today we have Doctor Fiona Hill in. I couldn't be more excited. I don't know of anyone who knows more about Putin himself, Russian history, his past, and potentially where this might all be headed.

Dearlove: Yeah, I think it's very exciting. Perfect guest at a perfect time when really we have to look closely at Russia and analyze, and there couldn't be a better person to do it with.

Ferguson: Especially someone who's been in three administrations already, one that may return. She also straddles not just the expertise and academic world, but navigating the political world that's going to be so key in the future.

Dearlove: Yes, absolutely, because the political dimension in Washington, as we'll discuss, is so important at the moment. I started working on the Soviet Union, straight Russia, but let's call it the Soviet Union, in the 60s when I started my career. And you know, I eventually did spend time behind the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. And the ideological divide was so fundamental, it actually seemed to those of us who were in the Cold War front line that that divide was completely unbridgeable. I mean there was a sort of juxtaposition which was so absolute and so separate, and the moment you know you crossed the Iron Curtain and went into a country like Czechoslovakia or into Poland, the atmosphere between East and West was absolutely fundamentally different.

INTERVIEW

Hill: I was going to say that's obviously right, and I think it's also one of the reasons why things went awry of the time of the 1990s and into the 2000s, because we had an assumption on our part that once the ideological divide was bridged or broken in some way with the disappearance of the Soviet system, the communist party, central planning, etc, that we might be able to put on another footing. And I think what we can see certainly since Putin came back and this is where leadership matters and I think you might agree with that and have some observations of your own given your time in the Soviet Union, also in your time in post Soviet Russia, that Putin has gone back to those historical patterns of those historical divisions and separation out from certainly The United Kingdom and Europe, Western Europe, but also The United States. So the ideology in a way masked some of these kind of deeper tensions. And we perhaps made a mistake in the 1980s. It wasn't apparent because the Soviet Union was still there and was reforming. But later into the 2000s, when Putin comes in and thinking that we'd seen some, you know, real shift, strategic shift in terms of Russia once communism and the Soviet system had disappeared.

Dearlove: Just let me tell you an anecdote which will amuse you, because I think this cultural issue and you know, the separation historically, let's say the two cultures, when I the first time I went to Moscow after the end of the Cold War, there was a huge banquet given in my honor. Where was it held? And you know obviously KGB officers in attendance and other senior people from the national security sort of apparatus. It was in the Danilov Monastery. Oh my goodness, yep. So you know, which is the home of Russian Orthodoxy. So in a way, there was a clue there already to the fact that, you know, this image of Russia, which was profound and deep and historic, was going to be projected.

Hill: But we didn't interpret that correctly at the time. And that's also very interesting that you mentioned that, because if you were out there in your MI6 role, and of course the people who were hosting you were your counterparts, and people like Vladimir Putin, the cohort around him, were often very critical about the Soviet state jettisoning the Orthodox. They said that the new system had missed a beat. In other words, that the Orthodox Church was an instrument of state power and shouldn't have been rejected and it would have been useful in kind of building up the integrity of the state and also presumably for their own intelligence purposes. As of course turned out over time to be the case, Putin has forged a very close relationship with the current patriarch Kirill. And also in the past, many of the top leadership of the Orthodox Church, even in the period when ostensibly the Soviet system was secular, became part of that larger intelligence apparatus, certainly many of the people at the top. And there seem to be a pretty now close affinity between the Kremlin, the Church, obviously in the war in Ukraine and elsewhere that mirrors in some respects the imperial linkages between the tsars and the Romanov and other dynasties and the Church. But it's very much becoming this sort of fusion of church and state.

Ferguson: I wonder if it would be possible then just sort of jumping off of that, looking more closely right now at the war in Ukraine. I know that you've been pretty outspoken lately, of course, about what's at stake. I mean, what we have today is very different from what we had a year ago, different from what we had in February 2022. There's so many eyes right now on whether or not there'll be the possibility of getting the approval for the funding from Washington, DC. Could you just talk to us a little bit about what's essentially at stake if this doesn't get over the line and whether or not other EU states, Japan, whether others such as Great Britain can ever fill the void?

Hill: Yes. I mean, we really are in a very difficult situation because getting back to this deeper history that we've brushed the surface of here, Putin is now presenting this conflict in Ukraine now that we're, as you're saying, on the eve of the second anniversary of the Russian invasion as a kind of existential conflict with the West fitting a long pattern of centuries of conflict between Russia, the Russian empire and its western neighbors. And for Putin himself, given the fact that we're entering into the twenty fourth year of him in power, he's just announced himself as the candidate for the next presidential election. No one's talking about his age or the likelihood that he'll be in office ultimately for thirty six years. And in fact, that's almost the point because by now he's giving Stalin a run for his money in terms of longevity and the position of head of state. And if he makes it out to 2036 with another two rounds of president, he'll have been in power longer, just slightly longer than Catherine the Great. And that again, in a way also underscores this kind of sense of difference, this sense of opposition. Catherine the Great is one of the empresses, the emperors, the tsars, the tsarinas that Putin always points to. Of course, she was a transplanted German princess, which is also utterly fascinating, you know, given Putin's fascination also with Germany. But she becomes, you know, basically one of the architects of the Russian state that Putin is wanting to recreate. It's Catherine the Great that first seizes all of the territories of what's now modern Ukraine that Putin is making a bid for. So that kind of message from all of this under symbolic ways and also in these sort of indirect signaling is that Putin intends, and he's just said this quite recently in his annual call in show, he intends to keep a grip of all this territory and even to expand even further in Ukraine. So the message is unless there is pushback from The United States, from the Europeans, Putin will turn the tables on Ukraine and certainly keep on going. So the bottom line is that we're at a really very difficult pivotal point. Ukraine has managed to fend the Russians off, regain territory, and keep on to the territory that Russia hasn't succeeded in taking because of US and European support. And if that is not forthcoming in the next several months until Ukraine has any kind of hope of building up some of its own military resources and its defense industry, which is gonna take a heck of a lot of time, I think we're really going to see Russia set on the path towards regaining the kind of dominance that Putin thinks Russia deserves. He said over and over again that he wants to see a Europe in which there is a huge demand for Russia and which Russia is restored to the previous greatness. All the talk about seeing the collapse of the Soviet Union is the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century, constantly talking about the Russian Empire and the Russian state. Putin's making it clear, crystal clear over and over again in all of his statements, and we'll see even more of it in his sort of campaign. I mean, he's really have to try, does he? But campaign to be the president again in Russia of this idea that Russia needs to dominate, not just in the Eastern part of Europe, but in Europe overall.

Ferguson: So we've got ourselves full circle again. So much of this war is about the perception of how well or how badly it's going. You know, on this side of the pond here in The United States, there's so much conversation about how the spring offensive, the summer offensive, whether it did or didn't achieve anything. And, of course, we've seen Putin, you know, touring The Middle East or going to visit places like Abu Dhabi and certainly presenting himself in a certain kind of victorious body language as he arrives and is received by other states. You know, how much is there a danger of perception here about what is victory? What is success in Ukraine for the Ukrainians and for Putin himself? I mean, so much is often written about his gargantuan, you know, casualty rates, how much this is costing him in diplomatic isolation and financially. But in reality, how much is he gaining or losing here?

Hill: Well, I think actually the symbolic and psychological aspects of this, just as you are pointing out, are pretty important. I think Putin already feels like he's scored several wins here, winning on points, let's say, rather than in terms of actual knockout blows. I mean, as you've pointed out, the Russian losses are staggering actually, if you kind of think about both sides of the conflict in Ukraine and Russia. We're approaching about half a million casualties, deaths, people who are severely injured. You know, we used to think that the collapse of the Soviet Union was relatively peaceful, but of course we don't think about Chechnya, the war that Russia waged on its own territory when the Chechens tried to secede in the 1990s. That was more than 200,000 people killed there as well, including Russian servicemen. It was a sort of nadir of Russian power and the domestic state leveling of Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya and most of the region led to waste before a pro-Russian government gets installed. We're seeing a kind of repetition of this in Ukraine, but this is external. If we're really in the realm of 300,000, even more people, 350,000, there's all these kind of estimates that are going on here, way in excess of any losses in Afghanistan when it was the Soviet Union, of course, in a much larger state. I mean, this really does seem astounding, but for Putin, that's kind of discounted. He's factoring that in. The Russian public doesn't seem to be reacting to these losses. Obviously, he is also spreading out a lot of propaganda. This is again in your psychological part of the operation here that Ukraine's losses are even more debilitating. And you hear this talked about all over in all kinds of different circles. Even the fact that so many people have fled Russia, 1,500,000 to the neighboring republics, former Soviet Republics, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, for example, or further afield in Europe and elsewhere. This is almost presented as a kind of also a symbolic success, the best and the brightest because these are all the flower of youth literally and also the tech entrepreneurs who are working remotely. I even hear from Kremlin connected Russians that this is saving Russia from disaster. The best and the brightest are outside the country. They're not dying on the front unlike Ukraine where the best and the brightest are dying on the front. That's a fascinating insight. Amazing, isn't it? Because it's grim and basically what Putin is doing, he's playing with all of this. He is giving himself these symbolic psychological wins here. And in a way he is symbolically defeating Ukraine as we speak. Even though Ukraine is actually still holding its own on the battlefield and even on the Black Sea has literally turned the proverbial tide against Russia breaking the stranglehold and seeing a lot of the Russian Black Sea fleet off to other ports away from Sevastopol and Crimea to Novorossiysk on the Russian side of the Black Sea and also to the point that the Russians have made a deal with the breakaway Republic of Abkhazia to build a new port for the Black Sea fleet there. So, for Putin, this is the classic KGB operation. I'm sure Richard has quite a lot to say about this. It's propaganda, it's misinformation, it's disinformation, it's a psyops, it's all kind of messing with people's minds to defeat you in the political battlefield even if that might not be happening on the physical military battlefield.

Dearlove: I agree with your analysis to an extent, Fiona, but isn't there something fundamentally illusory about what Putin has done in terms of his impact on Russia? I mean I find it very very hard to believe that within the Kremlin, that there certainly aren't significant stresses and strains, because the overall impact on the country of this extraordinary military venture has been, you know, so profound that I'm sure, I mean, in a way, I'm not in my former position. So I'm not aware of what the cracks look like. But I would have thought that, you know, there are plenty of people sitting in CIA in my former service, probably the two most successful organizations in intelligence terms in terms of working on Russia, straight Soviet Russia, that there isn't something fundamentally amiss. I've also been of the view that there is something wrong with Putin. He may well have a health problem. And I've had that from people who, let's say, have a pretty close to the sort of, in Russia, to knowing what's not being talked about. So I agree with a very difficult period, and that it is essential that the West, and that's primarily The United States because only The US has that sort of huge clout, continues its support. And, you know, is it possible there's gonna be a deal in Washington? I cannot believe that the Republican Party, given its record on foreign policy, is ultimately, you know, gonna sacrifice Western interests overall for, you know, issues to do with the Mexican border. It seems to me just a staggering trade. And okay, politics have changed significantly in The States, but you know, I've been a great believer in the responsibility of Republican foreign policy, you know since the Cold War onwards.

Hill: You said a whole host of very important things there Richard. I mean on The US side yes unfortunately we're in the midst of a real election campaign for the president as opposed to a pretend one on the Russian side. I mean Putin doesn't have to face the kind of scrutiny and stresses that presidential candidates, and particularly Joe Biden in this case, are facing here in The United States. And everything that we see in terms of the machinations in Congress, less so in the Senate, but certainly in the House of Representatives, are related to people positioning themselves for kind of what they think they might get out of the presidential campaign that will be really picking up the pace after January here. But also the southern border, just like in The United Kingdom and in Europe in terms of the southern border as well, is really one of great political concern. Obviously, a national security crisis too, because half the time you're not really sure who is coming over the borders. But I think that there is going to have to be a larger reckoning with this. I keep hoping that things will work out over time and that people will see the necessity. On the other issue of The United States alone, I do actually think that it's important also for the signaling to Russia that Europe is more outspoken. And I think we're starting to see some of this with the EU making the commitment to Ukraine overall in terms of candidacy and accession negotiations, really problematic with Hungary, of course, on releasing funds and the EU is gonna have to start to really get tough on Hungary here. I mean, it's gonna be showing itself to have any decisive ability. The UK has obviously played a very important role in support for Ukraine and that needs to continue and it needs to be signaled to Russia, to China, to all the other participants in this war, Iran and North Korea and their participants in terms of the support for material and military support to Russia. That this really matters for Europe as well. And it also matters to the back signaling to members of Congress in The US. The Europeans are standing up militarily and financially because there is still a belief here despite all of the evidence and the constant reports of significant European support writ large and also from Japan, South Korea, you know, Canada, and elsewhere, New Zealand, Australia, that it is only The United States that is doing this alone. So, there's kind of an important element of that. And Putin needs to know as well that Europeans don't have any daylight with The United States and so does China. But on the other part that you laid out there at the very beginning about the stresses and strains, I mean, I know there are stresses and strains. We saw the Prigozhin insurgency and of course Prigozhin laid it all out there. The war was a mistake. It's been going very badly up until that point and it needs to be ended all in one. But of course on Russia's terms. I mean, so what Prigozhin was doing in his insurgency was laying out the fact that the war was a huge mistake. It had been a massive blunder. That's kind of the common view, but he was also saying that it actually has to be won and that Russia shouldn't be defeated and Russia shouldn't really have to pay for that mistake. And that's where all the stresses and strains are. If Putin can again convince us all through all these psychological and other operations that he's winning on a Hasbro and that we should just give it up, which is of course part of the whole political battlefield, and we give up before we've, you know, even seen whether there's a chance for turning things around militarily as we go into the new year by Ukraine, this actually saves him big time because the longer this goes on, as you're laying out there, the more disastrous it is for Putin. The casualty rates, the impact on the economy. Right now, the economy actually looks pretty good by all measures. But we saw in the call in session that he had great concerns about inflation because they've created a war economy. They're putting all of the resources into building up the military and defense procurement and production sides. They're putting all of their resources out there into paying for people in the military, and this is actually pushing up inflation. They've taken over all of the Western companies that have left. There is quite a bit of generation of the economy, but it's a very distorted economy. Over the longer term, again, you will start to see some problems. Growth cannot be driven forever by the war. In fact, Putin's biggest problem is probably the peace time, as is often the case in these instances. And you mentioned his health. Well, there's a lot of people around him in the same age cohort who we do know have health problems. And I've heard the same things that you have. All kinds of speculation if it's thyroid, some condition that's being managed but could have some deleterious effects later. He's the wildcard in the system. So if something happens to his health, the whole thing gets turned on its head and if we look back to the victory day of World War Two commemorations of May this past year, he really did not look well. He looked quite infirm. We also know that there are other people around him who have had cancer who've been treated in the West. You've got all these different messaging coming out of people making it very clear that they would actually like to restore the relationships with Europe and The United States. Many of them were getting treated here despite all of the stresses and strains in the relationship. And you know I myself and many other colleagues are already getting little feelers being sent out to see whether The United States and the West are ready to negotiate, which also suggests that Russia would like to see this ended. But again, completely on Putin's terms, no return of territory, the opportunity to put pressure on Ukraine over the longer term, and certainly no reparations. I mean, as long as this discussion goes on about taking the interest from seized Russian assets, for example, which has really ratcheted up in both The UK and in The United States and legal and other financial circles, that also puts a chill on all those Russian business people and other investors and on the Kremlin itself. I mean, the Kremlin did not anticipate that we would basically inflict such high penalties. Otherwise, of course, they wouldn't have had so much money invested or placed in the West for safekeeping.

Ferguson: If Putin were to get those terms, or even the best part of them that you're laying out here in exchange for peace, what would be the longer term impacts there? And I'm thinking more broadly about global security and China. Obviously, of convenience with Iran, to a certain point with China. I mean, how invested is China in seeing Putin succeed? And if he does succeed, what does it mean for them and the broader picture globally?

Hill: Yeah, well, it wouldn't really be peace. It would just be another phase. For Putin, it would be basically cementing and consolidating what he already has. And then he would try by all kinds of other means to try to undermine the situation in Ukraine as much as possible. We've already seen cyber attacks. You can be sure that things would become very difficult for Zelensky. The Ukrainians have put off their elections for next year, but there would be increasing pressure on Zelensky and others to be held to account inside of Ukraine. And we will already see some of the stresses and strains there. If we look at Georgia, for example, where Russia invaded in 2008, Mikheil Saakashvili, the bête noire of Putin at that time is now in a Georgian prison hospital, you know, having been eventually ousted from power and the current Georgian ruling party, Georgian Dream has pulled the country closer to Russia, not the population, but certainly the kind of political spectrum changed Georgia's politics and its geopolitical perspectives quite dramatically. And there'd be all kinds of ways in which Russia could make mischief. The other thing as well is that Putin would present this as having defeated the West. For him, this would be a capitulation because we've said we'd be there supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes. And so he would say he's defeated NATO, defeated The United States, defeated the Europeans. And then there's the other dimensions of this getting back to what you said about China. China has actually been a bit of a restraint on Russia, not necessarily in terms of the actual conventional battlefield. And president Xi is very close to Putin and this personal relationship means a lot to him. And he certainly doesn't want to see Putin lose and China wouldn't either because then they'd look like they had actually backed the wrong horse. And also there's a great deal of desire in China and elsewhere to have Russia remain as a strong global power, a kind of counterweight to The United States and counterweight to other powers, particularly as one that's close and increasingly dependent on China for a variety of economic and political support. But there's also the constraint on the nuclear aspect, on nuclear weapons. Russia was flirting with the idea, not just flirting, but considering using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, a battlefield nuclear weapon. And they got pushback from all the nuclear powers, the UN permanent nuclear members, China, The United States, France, Britain, and then some others as well, India, for example. I mean, the world has become a much more complex place since the end of World War Two. The P5 of the permanent nuclear powers on the security council, the UN have been joined by a host of others in India and Pakistan. Obviously, we've got North Korea going rogue on its weapons program, concerns about Iran, etcetera. And there would be a real risk of proliferation if the war is ended on Russia's terms here because Ukraine was pushed to give up its nuclear weapons by The United States and other powers, the US and UK guaranteed alongside Russia, Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. So I think the message to the rest of the world there would be, well, you've got no guarantees without nuclear weapons. We're already hearing other states discuss the prospect of getting their own nuclear weapon. Countries like Finland and Sweden, which had actually been opposed to nuclear weapons use joining NATO, which is in effect a nuclear military alliance. And of course, Japan and South Korea have been very focused on helping Russia precisely because of this. They rely on The US nuclear umbrella in the Asia, the Indo Pacific region. But also this would set an incredibly bad precedent. Japan has territorial disputes still with Russia. It has territorial disputes with China, obviously. South Korea has North Korea at its border. All the other treaty countries with The United States, we have bilateral treaties or countries with security arrangements, The Philippines, Vietnam, etcetera, would look at this and just wonder, well, what are the prospects if I get into a conflict? And India, for example, would be very nervous because, I mean, so many territorial disputes also with Pakistan, but also with China up in the Himalayas. There's a lot riding on how this is resolved. We already see disputes between Venezuela and Guyana in South America. I mean, just the scope here for mischief as a result of a resolution. Again, Putin would not be deterred and in fact might be emboldened by his success no matter how bloody and costly this has been, you know, to try again sometime later.

Ferguson: And speaking of that emboldenment, just if I could take us back, you mentioned Georgia 'eight. I remember Syria, the red line in 2013. Then of course Crimea 2014, entering the war in Syria 2015. I was living in Beirut when, you know, a Hezbollah official would brag to me about how Russian special forces had helped them learn more about comms and urban warfare. You know, looking back, knowing about Putin in retrospect and his actions now, was this situation mismanaged? Was he underestimated?

Hill: Yes, he was underestimated, Jane. Look, and I will also admit that I underestimated him in The Middle East. I mean, it's not merely my area of expertise. It's obviously one of yours. And I didn't really foresee Putin intervening or Russia intervening the way that it did in 2015 in Syria. I was certainly pretty clued up on what was likely to happen in Ukraine and elsewhere. That really wasn't that much of a surprise to be frank. Because in 2008 when Russia moved into Georgia, I was in the National Intelligence Council at the time. And together with some of Richard's old colleagues, we'd been worrying and warning about Russian intervention in the breakaway parts of Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and all the pressure that the Russians were putting on Georgia. We also thought that something similar would happen in Ukraine, already pressure building up on Ukraine because both Georgia and Ukraine had been given the sort of open door to NATO membership back in 2008 at the Bucharest summit. And it was clear that Putin wanted to make a move against both of them to just sort of make sure that both Ukraine and Georgia and all the others stayed in Russia's orbit. And this goal goes back to the early 1990s. There were people who were around Putin now who were then also putting pressure on the former Soviet states. It precedes all of the discussions about NATO. If you go back to the 1990s and Richard would probably remember this as well, there was all kinds of tensions and pressures between Russia and the former Soviet states. Putin still thinks that they're breakaway states that need to be brought back, maybe not all of them, but certainly some of the key territories. And in the Middle East, right now, also post October 7, I think we have to be super careful not to underestimate Russia's role and its propensity there for mischief, given the relationships with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, continuing with Syria, with all of the Gulf States, all the Russian monies there right now. And, you know, we need to watch that one very closely.

Dearlove: When I was traveling to Moscow primarily after nine-eleven and acting somewhat as a sort of intermediary and a message carrier, the Russians asked me on my next visit to Washington. This is when Condoleezza Rice was in the White House and the National Security Advisor, asked me to say to the Bush administration, look, why don't you give more consideration to us? Why didn't you treat us as equals, at least in the attention that you give us on the world stage? Because at the moment, the dialogue isn't there, you're ignoring us. And they were clearly very sore at this point in time. And the response, I'm not going to say exactly who said this, but you can guess, when I delivered this message to Washington, Richard, you know, Russia, formerly the Soviet Union, has the GDP somewhere between Denmark and Italy. Why on earth should we treat Russia as a global power, as a world power? And I mean, that's an interesting observation. On the one hand, you could see it's a sort of trigger for Russia's resentment of the West, which was already running deep. And there was a period when we thought that they might cooperate with us to a greater degree. But it also indicates that under Putin's plan, there is a fundamental weakness. Russia is not a major economic power. It's in a period of severe post imperial decline. I mean, you could say that the explanation of Putin's behavior is a sort of severe case of post imperial anxiety. And for example, if you look at the relationship with China, it's completely imbalanced now. And Russia is staggering towards a relationship where it's going be very much a junior partner. Things are not going well in China either. I would argue at the moment that under Xi Jinping, we're seeing peak China, and the idea that China's going to go on rising as a political and economic and military power, I have severe problems with that analysis. So you know, there is this issue of Russia being held at arm's length in a crucial period of time in international relations, when they were becoming very fluid. But on the other hand, there is a fundamental weakness and I mean I won't go into detail, you know the lack of investment in Russia, the lousy demographics, it's a commodity dependent economy, just you know when fossil fuels are beginning to go out of fashion. So you know there are many things that cause us I think to ask big questions about Putin's or Russia's vulnerabilities internationally.

Hill: Yeah, I agree with all that, but I'm going to give it a bit of a twist here. You know, George W. Bush was famous for his kind of malapropisms and one of the words that I actually love and I think ought to be now standard in English language was misunderestimate. And I always think that Russia is misunderestimated. And in part it's because all of that is true. And yet Russia has always historically been able to marshal a great deal of coercive power and be able to redeploy all of its assets limited as they sometimes may be to its security apparatus and to its military. Because Russia for most of its history, and in fact one might even argue that the period of 1990s and 2000s was something of an aberration in this, has been very much focused on the power of the state and the coercive abilities of the state rather than on the health, wealth and prosperity of the Russian people. In fact, the early part of Putin, if he'd actually left the stage and Dmitry Medvedev, who became president briefly, had stayed on there, one might be able to argue that Russians were leading and living their best possible lives because of the growth of the Russian economy because of the rise in commodity prices of course between 2000 and 2010. I mean the 1990s it hit rock bottom. The country was bankrupt. Oil and gas prices were literally in the tank. And because of the growth of China and all the global demand, the Russian economy really ticked up in those first periods of Putin's presidency. He was extraordinarily lucky. But he was also very clever and careful with the stewarding of financial resources, paying off all of the sovereign debt and the private sector debt, for example, making sure that the country was solvent again and stashing away massive rainy day funds, big sovereign wealth funds which they're now of course dipping into. So you could see that turning around and that's very important. They also instituted a flat tax and in terms of the development of the middle class in Russia that's pulled along by so many people working for the Russian government itself. And it's almost 60% of people who are employed in Russia work for the government. So one way or another that is the bureaucracy. The more money and revenue that the government brings in in taxes on oil and gas rather than on taxes on people, the more that you can actually redistribute in the system. And that's also an important element that we tend to miss. So the framing in Russia, I don't want to go on in too much detail, is somewhat different. When we look at GDP, we're thinking about per capita incomes. We're thinking about how our people and our private sector perform. We don't have that overburdening state. People think we do, but we actually don't. But in Russia, pretty much everything is related to the state. And of course, you have now this huge military, this conscription. People are getting paid large sums of money, relatively speaking, in remote areas, spreading again more money around as a result of going to the front and compensation for deaths. So a lot of people actually feel that they're benefiting from this one way or another. But all of this is just to say that if the Russians can marshal a lot of their resources, they can project much more strength, literally punch above what you would otherwise think to be their weight of GDP. And Putin knows how to do that. I mean, again, we have to remember that Putin was very proficient at judo as a young man. And the metaphor of chess and all the rest of it doesn't really quite fit it because you're always trying to turn your own weaknesses into a strength and turn the strengths of your opponents against you. So, frankly, I've always thought that Russia was, to use George W. Bush's wonderful term, misunderestimated again and that we really didn't get the point. Throughout its history Russia's never been as strong as people make out or as weak as people make out. Now there are lots of problems there but Putin is betting that he can keep this going for some time. He can still basically pull people into the military on the front, particularly if Ukraine gets more constrained. And he just does believe that with this psychological operation against all of us right now, these symbolic wins, he can actually start to have people in The US and in Europe start pushing for a peace negotiation. And all the way along, he's been trying to figure out how to outmaneuver. If you go back also to the early 2000s after nine-eleven, the period in which you were basically working with them, I mean Russia was also bogged down over a period of time after that as well in that dreadful war in Chechnya. And what Putin wanted was a pass there. And of course, you know, it was very difficult for The US and others to give him a pass in that kind of context. Putin wanted to have a trade for support for The United States in Afghanistan and elsewhere for basically allowing Russia to have a free hand in Chechnya and really also in what they were still calling the near abroad. Putin really believes very firmly in spheres of influence and he believes that Russia has a right to one.

Dearlove: That sort of potential deal was clear way back when I was going to Moscow. And I mean the war in Chechnya was very very tough for the Russians, but they eventually came out on top but it took them a long time. And it was brutal if we think about what's happening now in Gaza.

Hill: I mean the Russians flattened Grozny and it was a population of 1,000,000 people and we think up to 250,000 people died.

Dearlove: Russian special forces executed an awful lot of people.

Hill: That's right. And totally leveled the place and got it. And then put in Ramzan Kadyrov, instead of actually living up to the commitments that they made in the Khasavyurt Accords at the end of the 1990s, in which they were going to have a compromise with the existing Chechen leadership, and after a period of time, they just assassinated everyone.

Ferguson: You talk about Putin's gambles, how he plays with luck and strategy and punches above his weight. Looking ahead, is it fair to say that Putin is gambling on a Trump success, Trump 2.0 in the election next year? What would that mean for him? What does Putin hope for US politics going forward?

Hill: Yeah, that's literally his Trump card. You know, there's no two ways about it. And it's also just the anticipation that Trump's going to come back is something, you know, for Putin of a boon. He can play with that. He can use it as kind of a warning, scare the Ukrainians with it, the Europeans, the rest of the world. Putin is pretty confident given his experiences with Trump in the past that Trump will be quick to try to resolve the whole conflict and war in Ukraine in his favor. Obviously, Putin has had Trump's number for some time. He knows how to manipulate him. He's been very good at the art of flattery with Trump. He sees Trump as an asset in many respects, because although Trump can be extraordinarily unpredictable and Putin probably has to tread very carefully in fact not to insult him and not to kind of cross lines that Trump lays for himself. Putin is pretty confident that he can stoke up the culture wars here, there and everywhere. And just with a little bit of deft use of political influence operations and propaganda, he can keep things sort of moving in his direction. It already is moving in his direction in any case, everything that Trump surrogates and Trump himself says about NATO, about Europe and European security, about world and global affairs, about Ukraine, everything that's happening on Capitol Hill. I mean, for Putin, this is just for him a sign that, again, everything is going to rapidly switch in his direction, in his favor.

Dearlove: Is this Trumpism or is this US isolationism, given that you started off giving us a very sort of historical context for the relationship between the West and Russia, which I absolutely agreed with? But, you know, are we looking at a severe case of US isolation, or is this purely a Trump related phenomenon, or is it a bit of both?

Hill: It's a bit of both, I think, Richard. You know, and I think a lot of people, like my colleague Bob Kagan, here at Brookings, have been writing very cogently about this, for example. I mean, we know that The United States stepped away in more recent history from the League of Nations after setting this up at the end of World War One. It was forced back into action because of the implications of all of this. We've got even earlier historical examples. We've got just this streak ever since the founding of the Republic of a desire to pull away from world affairs and then getting pulled back when it becomes evident that The United States sitting things out is actually very detrimental for US interests. Now, this time around, however, making the case that it's going to be detrimental for US interests is very difficult because of the nature of Trump himself and Trumpism. This is very much personally focused. It's capricious. It's not really kind of rooted in any particular ideology. And it's really very much centered around Trump himself. Although I think we can also see that there are many other acolytes and Trump want-to-bes who are out there, you know, also jumping on the same bandwagon here. Because obviously in The United States, there are a lot of domestic concerns just as there are in every other country writ large. And I think it would be fair to say that every country at the moment with a few notable exceptions is having some kind of domestic crisis and wondering how much they should be engaged in global affairs given all of the major demographic and technological and climate changes and the impacts that they're having on the home front. Yeah, we're just gonna have to see how this plays out sadly. Trump is a wild card literally, but so is Vladimir Putin. He's also a kind of maybe he's the joker in the Russian system, not just the Trump card. Because just getting back to what you said, if something happens to Putin's health and his well-being, if he really takes a turn for the worse, all bets are off in Russia about what really happens next. It can go in all kinds of different directions. If something happens to the health of Donald Trump and even of Joe Biden, of course, everyone's fixated on this, the system is more robust here. That's certainly not the case in Russia at this particular time. It's incredibly brittle in Russia.

Dearlove: There's no mechanism for change. It's been a fantastic discussion really and I enjoyed it.

Hill: Yeah, it's a real pleasure, Jane and Richard. Thank you so much.

ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE

Ferguson: It's so interesting to me what Doctor Hill was saying really about the psychological impact, that Putin is approaching this from a near psyops sort of perspective. I mean, is this something that we should have predicted that he would do? I mean, this is more than spin, how Putin is somehow presenting this war as a victory.

Dearlove: It is something more than spin, and I think it's fundamental to the way that the Russians approach the situation that they've created. I suppose I would put it very briefly by saying that we're in a state of grey warfare with Russia as far as the Russians are concerned, and they will bring to bear all their psyops, you know, information warfare techniques in which they're very sophisticated, they're very practiced, and of course it's much easier to operate that sort of capability in an autocratic state where you can bend any aspect of the media to your will, and where, you know, you have your irons in the fire outside Russia, in other people's systems, and you can exploit those mercilessly. And that's exactly what the Russians are doing now. And you can bet your bottom dollar that, you know, somewhere in the SVR, there's a unit, somewhere in the GRU, there's a unit, you know, which is thinking very hard about what their moves will be. And I mean, there was a brief reference to Guyana and the Venezuelan claim on Guyana. If you look at that in close detail, and some friends of mine have just done a big analysis of it, the Russians have been pushing that issue with the Venezuelans for eighteen months. And the trail is very clear to be seen in Russian media and South American media, which is sympathetic to Russia. And it's a classic example, I think, of Putin opening another front, which, you know, will be difficult for The United States to handle because obviously, Guyana's security is going to be largely an American issue. And I think we haven't got time now, but you can list 15 or 20 examples of that type of activity. And we tend not to make connections in the West at a governmental level. And a friend of mine recently was at a briefing in London with the defense intelligence staff. He's an academic. I'm being a little indiscreet here, but I think I can be. And I asked a question about Russian strategy and the links between these crises. You know, we're all beginning to use the word poly crisis. And there's no question that in the mind of many analysts, many experts, that there are quite extraordinary linkages to be made. And I think, you know, in the West at a governmental level there's reluctance to jump to these conclusions because it looks too conspiratorial. But in fact, I think that, you know, we are, as it were, on the receiving end of something very, very serious, very carefully thought through, and very strategic from the Russian point of view. We have to respond, and we're not well equipped to respond. That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday.

Hill: Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Drop us a line. Tell us your thoughts. What decisions have impacted you and where you live? You can write to us. Our email is 1decision@1decisionpodcast.com. From me and the team, thank you for listening, and see you next time.