Former Trump aide Fiona Hill: Putin 'has got Trump's number' and has no plan to end the Ukraine war

At the G20 summit in Osaka in 2019, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin got into an exchange about who had done more for Israel. Fiona Hill, then a White House national security adviser and a fluent Russian speaker, was in the room. Trump pointed out that things in Israel had been named after him, citing his recognition of Jerusalem as the capital and the new embassy. Putin replied, in Hill's telling, that perhaps they should just name the country after him.

Hill says she nearly died laughing when she saw John Bolton, then the national security adviser, with his moustache twitching. Trump's team understood that the president was being trolled. Trump, she says, did not. He ignored Putin's tone and the way he shifted in his seat, took the suggestion at face value, and answered that renaming the country would be a bit too much.

Hill described the scene in an hour-long interview with Sam Kiley for The Independent's podcast World of Trouble. She says Putin made similar jokes at Trump's expense on other occasions, and that interpreters glossed over the language and intent. Her conclusion is that Putin has "got Trump's number" and feels able to tease him to his face, relying on the language barrier to cover it.

Hill, a British-American who is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution and chancellor of Durham University, served as a national security adviser in Trump's first administration. She testified in the 2019 congressional impeachment proceedings against him. She has also said on the record that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and in 2019 argued that Moscow's aim was to put whoever won under a cloud.

The interview comes as Trump claims "tremendous progress has been made" toward peace after days of frantic diplomacy. His special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is due in Moscow early next week to discuss an amended plan drawn up with European leaders and Ukraine. The original 28-point plan was widely criticised as pro-Russian. Putin has already pushed back, saying Ukraine must give up large areas of territory.

Hill is pessimistic about Putin's willingness to stop. "It is extremely difficult to see how Putin gives this up," she says. "His whole economy, his whole society, his whole politics, his whole preservation of self revolves around having this war go on."

She does not accept the theory that Trump's stance on Russia reflects blackmail. Trump, she says, is "an open book," and "we've all got something on Trump." Her explanation is more personal. She calls it a "man crush": Trump sees Putin as the "badass" he would like to be, a leader in charge of everything and surrounded by gold. Being in the company of such figures, she says, raises Trump in the eyes of others.

That, in her view, is Putin's lever. He recognises a man with a fragile ego who wants recognition from everyone who matters, including Xi Jinping, Putin and assorted royal families. She calls that approval "the coin of the realm" for Trump.

The article notes that Trump has attacked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky since the start of his presidency and accused him of starting the war. Russia in fact invaded Ukraine in 2014 and again on a full scale in 2022. What to watch now is Witkoff's Moscow trip and whether Putin accepts any version of the amended plan.