Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
It could of course have been pure coincidence that when Vladimir Putin unveiled Russia’s first hypersonic missile to the world, he did so with a simulation of the weapon plummeting into an unnamed peninsula bearing an uncanny resemblance to Florida.
The similarity was not lost on Donald Trump whose face whitened as he watched on, presumably with visions of his beloved Mar-a-Lago resort reduced to an atomic wasteland, flashing before his eyes.
Standing next to him on that day in March 2018 was Fiona Hill, the president’s Russia tsar at the time.
“That got Trump’s attention,” she said. “Trump was like, ‘Why did he do that? Real countries don’t have to do that.’”
For Hill, a long-term Kremlin watcher who once sat so close to Putin at dinner she could smell the detergent used to launder his clothes, the episode revealed much about how Mr Trump views the Russian leader. “He is deferential towards Putin because he really is worried about the risk of a nuclear exchange,” she said.
The threat of impending nuclear fallout shaped Hill’s early life. Born in County Durham in the 1960s, the daughter of a coalminer and a midwife, she was inspired to study Russian following the war scare of 1983, setting her on an extraordinary trajectory that propelled her all the way “from the coal house to the White House”.
So, when the two presidents shared an “excellent” phone call on Monday, Hill was uniquely placed to read the tea leaves of the paltry briefings from each side.
How did Mr Trump fare? “Terrible. Let’s give him a pass for effort,” she said, matter-of-factly, as if marking the president’s report card. A former Harvard researcher who serves as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, an influential foreign policy think tank, Hill is a career academic with the manner of a firm but fair head teacher.
“What Trump is doing is answering the wrong exam question,” Hill added.
“Trump thinks it’s just about real estate, about trade and who gets what, be it minerals, land or rare earths,” she explained. What the president doesn’t understand is that “Putin doesn’t want a ceasefire”.
As a member of Mr Trump’s security council from 2017 to 2019 , she said the president made it “very clear” that Ukraine “must be part of Russia”. “He really could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state,” she told a New York Times journalist.
But what has changed since Mr Trump was last in office, she said, is that he has surrounded himself with “sycophants and courtiers”, with no one pushing back against his more outlandish ideas.
During his first term, she said, “he was a little bit deferential here and there to various people. But now he’s so convinced [in his own abilities] that he doesn’t pay attention to anyone”.
Underpinning Mr Trump’s soft approach to Moscow, she believes, is his personal idolisation of Putin, and their joint belief in “spheres of influence” and “might makes right”. “Trump is enthralled by Putin, and as a result becomes in thrall to him,” she said.
www.telegraph.co.uk
The similarity was not lost on Donald Trump whose face whitened as he watched on, presumably with visions of his beloved Mar-a-Lago resort reduced to an atomic wasteland, flashing before his eyes.
Standing next to him on that day in March 2018 was Fiona Hill, the president’s Russia tsar at the time.
“That got Trump’s attention,” she said. “Trump was like, ‘Why did he do that? Real countries don’t have to do that.’”
For Hill, a long-term Kremlin watcher who once sat so close to Putin at dinner she could smell the detergent used to launder his clothes, the episode revealed much about how Mr Trump views the Russian leader. “He is deferential towards Putin because he really is worried about the risk of a nuclear exchange,” she said.
The threat of impending nuclear fallout shaped Hill’s early life. Born in County Durham in the 1960s, the daughter of a coalminer and a midwife, she was inspired to study Russian following the war scare of 1983, setting her on an extraordinary trajectory that propelled her all the way “from the coal house to the White House”.
So, when the two presidents shared an “excellent” phone call on Monday, Hill was uniquely placed to read the tea leaves of the paltry briefings from each side.
How did Mr Trump fare? “Terrible. Let’s give him a pass for effort,” she said, matter-of-factly, as if marking the president’s report card. A former Harvard researcher who serves as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, an influential foreign policy think tank, Hill is a career academic with the manner of a firm but fair head teacher.
“What Trump is doing is answering the wrong exam question,” Hill added.
“Trump thinks it’s just about real estate, about trade and who gets what, be it minerals, land or rare earths,” she explained. What the president doesn’t understand is that “Putin doesn’t want a ceasefire”.
As a member of Mr Trump’s security council from 2017 to 2019 , she said the president made it “very clear” that Ukraine “must be part of Russia”. “He really could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state,” she told a New York Times journalist.
But what has changed since Mr Trump was last in office, she said, is that he has surrounded himself with “sycophants and courtiers”, with no one pushing back against his more outlandish ideas.
During his first term, she said, “he was a little bit deferential here and there to various people. But now he’s so convinced [in his own abilities] that he doesn’t pay attention to anyone”.
Underpinning Mr Trump’s soft approach to Moscow, she believes, is his personal idolisation of Putin, and their joint belief in “spheres of influence” and “might makes right”. “Trump is enthralled by Putin, and as a result becomes in thrall to him,” she said.
Fiona Hill: Trump is terrified of Putin, I’ve seen it first hand
US president’s former Russia tsar believes World War Three is upon us as White House struggles to secure peace with the Kremlin
www.telegraph.co.uk