‘Putin’s whole life revolves around war – he’s manipulating Trump and doesn’t want peace,’ ex-US aide warns
Vladimir Putin knows exactly how to manipulate Donald Trump and has no intention of stopping the war in Ukraine despite the US president’s calls for peace, a top former White House aide warns.
Fiona Hill, a national security adviser during Trump’s first administration and an expert on Russia, regularly witnessed meetings between the two men.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent’s podcast World of Trouble, she reveals how Putin has “got Trump’s number” and feels able to mock the US president to his face, relying on the language barrier to cover his teasing.
Hill explains that Putin uses flattery to stroke Trump’s ego while continuing to do as he pleases in Ukraine: “It is extremely difficult to see how Putin gives this up.
“His whole economy, his whole society, his whole politics, his whole preservation of self revolves around having this war go on.”
Her startling insight comes as Trump claims “tremendous progress has been made” towards peace after days of frenetic diplomatic wrangling.
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is set to travel to Moscow early next week to discuss ending the war with an amended plan to halt hostilities drawn up with European leaders and Ukraine.
Putin has already pushed back on the prospect of a deal, saying Ukraine has to relinquish swathes of territory.
In an hour-long interview, Hill, an Anglo-American and now fellow at thinktank the Brookings Institute, describes how Putin knows how Trump can be flattered by simply being in the presence of world leaders.
The Russian president could not resist the temptation to tease him, which translators hid from a gullible Trump.
Hill, a fluent Russian speaker, tells how she witnessed members of Trump’s team hiding their amusement when the Russian president took the mickey out of The Don.
“One of the classic cases for me was in one of the last meetings that I saw between Trump and Putin, which was at the G20 in Osaka, in Japan in 2019,” she says.
“Putin and Trump in the conversation were doing a bit of chest beating about nuclear missiles and about whether Russia was ahead of the United States.
“And then they were also both bragging about how much they were respectively doing for Israel… Putin was basically going on about what Russia was doing. And Trump was saying, well, ‘no, there’s no way that Russia is a bigger support of Israel than I am’.
