Fiona Hill Says Putin Sensed West’s Weakness Before Ukraine War
- Former Trump aide worries Putin may take ‘one-sided action’
- China, India could play key role in ending the war, Hill says
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The Trump administration’s top adviser on Russia says President Vladimir Putin’s decision to go to war was guided by his sense of weakness in the West as well as his isolation stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“He thought the West had lost the plot, that we’d become very weak and distracted,” former National Security Council official Fiona Hill told Bloomberg Quicktake’s Emma Barnett in an interview airing at 8 p.m. New York time on Thursday. “He saw over a long period of time an inability for the West to stand up to its own values and its own principles, particularly when it came to pressure on other countries.”