Tuesday, Mar 8, 2022 • 58min

Fiona Hill on the War Putin Is Really Fighting

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Vladimir Putin was looking for a swift invasion that would halt Ukraine’s drift toward the West, reveal NATO’s fractures and weaknesses and solidify Russia as a global power. In response, the West threatened moderate sanctions, but ultimately showed little interest in stepping between Russia and Ukraine. Then came the war, and everything changed. Russia’s invasion met with valiant Ukrainian resistance. President Volodymyr Zelensky became an international hero. NATO countries unified behind a truly punishing sanctions regime and significant military support. Russia’s attack strengthened Ukraine’s national identity — and its desire to join the European Union. A conflict that the U.S. and Europe were treating as purely strategic is now a conflict about the West’s most fundamental values. Much of this has felt hopeful, even inspiring, to those watching from the comfort of home. But it has the potential to unleash a truly terrifying spiral of escalation. Putin, feeling backed into a corner, has raised the stakes. Last week, he called the West’s sanctions akin to an act of war and has put Russia’s nuclear arsenal on alert. And the global wave of support for Ukraine has made it increasingly difficult for Western leaders to de-escalate. In the fog of war, it isn’t hard to imagine an accident or miscommunication that triggers a World War III-like scenario. So what does a settlement here look like? What does Putin want? What would Zelensky accept? What will Europe and the U.S. sign onto? Is there any deal that could work for all the players? There are few people better positioned to answer those questions than Fiona Hill. Hill is a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. She served as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council under Donald Trump and as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasian affairs under Barack Obama and George W. Bush. And she is the co-author of the influential Putin biography “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.” We discuss how Putin’s motivations and ambitions have changed dramatically in the last decade, why Ukrainian identity is absolutely central to understanding this conflict, whether NATO expansionism is responsible for the current conflict, the different pathways the war could take, how political incentives have created a spiral of escalation for Russia, Ukraine and the West, whether the economic pain of the sanctions can incentivize regime change in Moscow, the possibility of China playing a mediating role in resolving the conflict, the dangers of backing Putin into a corner, whether Putin is willing to use nuclear weapons, what de-escalation could look like at this point, and much more. Book recommendations: Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder Not One Inch by M.E. Sarotte The Limits of Partnership by Angela Stent Putin’s World by Angela Stent Russia Under the Old Regime by Richard Pipes The Formation of the Soviet Union by Richard Pipes Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rogé Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin and Kristina Samulewski.

Talking about

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(3)

Fiona Hill

Ezra Klein

Michael Slackman

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Ezra Klein

00:33

I'm

Ezra Klein

, and this is "The Ezra Klein Show."

00:53

If there is to be an off ramp in

Ukraine

, a deal something to stop the fighting here, it's going to need to be something that

Putin

Zelensky

, and the

West

can all agree on. And as hard as that kind of deal was to imagine a month ago. It is harder now, because think about how all of the actors and factors here have changed.

01:15

Vladimir Putin

, he had a very optimistic view of how this was going to go. He thought he was going to roll in and

Ukraine

would be full of people with ethnic

Russian

heritage, with

Russian

fellow feeling. They're going to welcome the

Russians

as liberators. That is not how they welcome to the

Russians

01:32

So now,

Putin

fears the thing he fears most, which is humiliation. He's trying to secure not just

Ukraine

, but now his regime survival, and his very place in history. The stakes of this war have completely changed for him.

01:47

The

Ukrainian

people have united under President

Zelensky's

remarkable leadership. Their sense of national identity, their sense of who they are and where they belong in the world is completely different now.

01:58

They are not going to allow themselves to be mere pawns and games of great power politics. The idea that this could just be carved up between

Russia

and the

U. S.

and

Europe

, that's a fantasy.

02:12

And on that, the meaning of

Ukraine

, the stakes of

Ukraine

, they've changed for the

United States

and

Europe

too. To the extent the

West

thought much about

Ukraine

, they thought about it in terms of

Russia

, or just a troubling geopolitical conundrum. But now,

Ukraine

represents the values of the

West

, or at least the values

West

claims to hold, made manifest. And values are a lot harder to compromise on.

02:39

I'm recording this on Monday, and the

Kremlin

has just made new demands. They want

Ukraine

to foreswear joining any security blocs like

NATO

. They want

Ukraine

to recognize

Crimea

as part of

Russia

, and to declare much of

Eastern Ukraine

as independent and functionally under

Russian

control. And then, depending on how you read their comments, they are insisting on the complete demilitarization of

Ukraine

03:02

It is very, very, very hard to imagine

Zelensky

agreeing to much of that at all. But is there something here that could be agreed to, is there a deal that could give all sides here a way out? If anyone would know the answer, it is my guest today.

03:16

Fiona Hill

served as a national intelligence officer for

Russia

and

Eurasia

under Presidents

George W. Bush

and

Barack Obama

. She was Senior director for

European

and

Russian

affairs at the

National Security Council

under President

Trump

. She's the author of the books "Mr Putin: Operative In The Kremlin" and "There is Nothing for You Here".

03:33

And she's been thinking about the strategic and geopolitical and national questions of the region for decades. And so she lays out the factors, forces, and the psychology of the various players really well here. As always, my email, ezrakleinshow@nytimes. com.

03:56

Fiona Hill

, welcome to the show.

Fiona Hill

03:58

Oh, thanks so much,

Ezra

Ezra Klein

03:59

So there are a lot of different frameworks being thrown around right now for how to think about

Vladimir Putin

. There's

Putin

as a strategic, rational actor. There's

Putin

as a nostalgic imperialist. There's

Putin

, the unhinged maniac. What is the model you're using for understanding

Putin

right now?

Fiona Hill

04:18

Well, I think some of those models that you've just laid out do hold true.

Putin

remains a strategic thinker. He's certainly got strategic goals that he's trying to fulfill, irrespective of whether we might think that those are mad goals, you know, from our perspective.

04:35

These are goals that he has put forward for quite a period of time, including about

Ukraine

, but also about the rollback of

NATO

, and what he sees as some kind of monumental struggle with the

United States

for

Russia's

right to exist in the world. And he's certainly framed it in this way as well.

04:52

And then in there's all these kinds of questions about the way that he reads history, that he reads the situation around him, and the way that he has now over a long period of time. I mean, we have to remember he's been in power for 22 years. After a period of time, it's, you know, you and the state, and particularly in the case of

Putin

, have become fused together.

05:14

And you can just see it in the staging of everything. I mean, we can all observe it as outside witnesses to his actions, the way that he sets up meetings, the rooms that he meets in with statuary of famous Czars and Czarinas of the past, including, you know,

Catherine The Great

, the way that people talk about him as being the only decision maker in the

Russian

state, and the way that he has taken everything personally, and made everything personal in his pronouncements on the conflict in

Ukraine

05:42

So for him, the state and

Vladimir Putin

have become fused together. And what I fear about, when he get to the state of his mind, then, is that he sees himself as infallible, because he's decided to do something, therefore it should be done.

Ezra Klein

05:55

Do you believe that he is the only decision maker in the state?

Fiona Hill

05:59

Well, he can't possibly be the only decision maker because the decisions have to be made in the heat of battle that we're seeing right now by the generals on the ground. But he's certainly at the apex of a very narrow decision making vertical. I mean, the

Russians

call this the vertical of power. It's not even just a pyramid because it just is kind of a pole that

Putin

is at the top of.

06:21

But clearly, this latest assault on

Ukraine

, in the context of everything else that's been going on, has been decided by

Putin

along with a very small number of military officials and perhaps a handful of security officials around him.

Ezra Klein

06:35

There are two things that have struck me as both strange and important here. One is that the read of

Putin

, as I understand it 10 years ago, let's say, is that he's this very adept balancer of interests, that he's balancing the need to raise living standards among ordinary

Russians

, the need to enrich the

Russian

elites, the oligarchies, other members of the government, obviously, the need to enrich himself. And he was kind of managing to walk that line, you know, reasonably well.

07:05

And now, very much part of the Western strategy is to split that all apart, to say that to go into

Ukraine

, to continue with this campaign, is to mean devastating the living standards of ordinary

Russians

, to mean devastating the lives of these oligarchs and other members of the government get to lead. And so the

Putin

who used to think that was important, if he did, and the

Putin

who has decided to cast all that aside to conquer

Ukraine

, they seem like different Putins. And which one was right, or if one of them was right, strikes me as a very fundamental question.

Fiona Hill

07:39

Well, I think they were right. That was part of

Putin

. And you very rightly pointed to 10 years ago, because 10 years ago would have been 2012, not 2014. And 2014 is when

Putin

makes what is really the fateful and perhaps, you know, ultimately, we'll see whether it's fatal or not, certainly fatal for

Ukraine

, a decision to annex

Crimea

, and to intervene in

Ukraine

in a very different way. Prior to that, in 2006, of course, there was the energy crisis, where

Putin

decided to turn off the gas, you know, clearly using economic tools, energy tools, you know, rather than all of the military power.

08:17

And I would say that up until 2011 and really the aftermath of the global economic crisis,

Putin

was very much preoccupied with building up the

Russian

state, spreading the wealth, increasing prosperity for the inner circle of oligarchs and the broader circle of business people around him, for ordinary

Russians

08:36

And wanted, actually, to have

Russia

recognized as a viable part of the

, as it was then, and perhaps on track to be the 5th largest economy in the world, a far cry from where it is now. And then somewhere along the line, we can probably point to a period around 2007, which is on the eve of the global economic crisis, all the debt has been purged off of the

Russian

state,

Russia

is looking pretty solvent. They're starting to build up the military.

09:03

Putin

then sort of makes a decision that

Russia

isn't just going to sit idly by on the world stage, that it wants to, he wants to restore

Russia's

great power. He makes the infamous

Munich Security Conference

speech, basically saying he's not going to put up with the unipolar world anymore, and certainly not the expansion of

NATO

09:21

He's putting the world on notice. And then in that period afterwards, after we've had the kind of blow up of the international financial system, he makes some decision along the line to probably take advantage of what he sees as a growing weakness of the

West

, and his frustration with the

West

, to go in a different direction on

Ukraine

09:39

And he comes back into the

Russian

presidency in 2012 against the backdrop of major protests against him. People were not that thrilled in the big cities of

Moscow

and

St. Petersburg

at the idea of

Putin

being back, perhaps for eternity, which, you know, is kind of the prospect they see in front of them now as well. And he starts to make all of these pronouncements around that same time about

Ukraine

and

Russia

being one and the same country.

10:04

And this becomes the prelude for a decision to go in a completely different direction with this presidency, from being someone, as you say, focused on economics and all the other things that you've laid out, to someone focused on regathering the lands of the old

Russian Empire

, not just the

Soviet Union

. So it's a flip somewhere in that time frame.

Ezra Klein

10:21

Before we get into how

Putin

sees the

Russian

lands, because we're going to spend a bit of time there today, I want to ask about how he understands the

West

, because I'm not hearing that analyzed so much. You're seeing a lot of

Putin's

imperial rhetoric discussed, but what does

Putin

think we want? When you read his speeches, when you listen to his comments, what is his model of us?

Fiona Hill

10:44

Well, his model of us is quite negative, to say the least, and part of it's a historic model that fits into his perspective of

Russia

itself.

10:53

If you look at the speech that he made on the annexation of

Crimea

, it's steeped in history, and he sees the

United States

and

NATO

as the present manifestation of centuries of

European

powers from the

Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth

, to the

Swedish Empire

, to all kinds of things that nobody's thought about for a long time, or only reads about in history books, that have been after

Russia

, and the

Russian Empire

, and all the czars and czarinas, who he sees himself as the modern day embodiment.

11:21

And trying to push them back, roll them back from

Europe

, keep them down, constrain them, bring them to the knees, he uses all of this kind of language. And so, you know, when he puts the

United States

and

NATO

, and, you know,

Europe

into that frame, he sees a modern day version. And everything that we see today just underscores that

Putin

believes that we're literally out to get him. You know, the more that we talk about crushing the

Russian

economy, you know, there's loose talk by people now about, well, this will only end if

Putin

disappears.

11:52

This just feeds in to this mentality that

Russia

is always under siege, its leaders are always under siege. People always want regime change in

Russia

. Every time he looked at something that happened, for example, in the so-called

Color Revolutions

or uprisings. The

Arab Spring

, what happened? You saw

Hosni Mubarak

, the long standing leader of

Egypt

, basically pushed out of power, and you know, ending up in a prison cell, you know, for example.

12:18

Even worse, you saw

Mohammed Gaddafi

shot by rebel forces in what looked like a drainage pipe. And, you know, we hear stories that

Putin

played that image to himself over and over again, working himself into more of a state of paranoia. The overthrowing of

Saddam Hussein

and, you know, his hanging in

Iraq

, this is what

Putin

thinks about. He thinks that the

United States

is in the business of regime change.

12:40

And that always, throughout history, there's been some malevolent force, mostly coming from the

West

, discounting, for now, the

Mongols

from the East, mostly coming from the

West

, who is out to basically push change in

Russia

, subjugate

Russia

, and basically install its own version of

Russian

power. So unfortunately, right now, even all of the events of the present are feeding into that kind of mentality.

Ezra Klein

13:05

Putting aside the question of malevolence, is he on some level right that the

U. S.

and the

West

are in the business of regime change, not just in

Russia

, but in

Ukraine

, in some of the other places you mentioned and didn't mention. I've been thinking a bit about this narrative by the political scientist, Samuel Charap, who has been arguing that you can't understand

Russia's

actions in the region without understanding this is a two way contest for influence in

Ukraine

13:30

That, we've done a lot over the past 15, 20 years to try to bring them closer to us, not just opening

NATO

, but supporting Western leaders, training a generation of military officers, actually arming them, integrating them into

E. U

. licensing and trade and regulatory regimes. And so he sees that there's being a genuine, constant expansionary pressure from us that he's now trying to beat back. Is there a validity to that view?

Fiona Hill

13:55

Well, sure. I mean, you know, that's the way that

Putin

definitely sees things. And, you know, for many people in the

United States

, elsewhere, see that too, as that kind of competition. There is still a lot of hold over. But what that does is totally deny any agency on the part of

Ukraine

or any other country for that matter. Right? So we're always framing it like this, you know, with all due respect to all my colleagues who do this, you know, from the IR Perspective.

14:16

If you think around the world as well, many countries have fought for their independence, you know, precisely because people themselves want to. What about the

United States

, for example?

14:25

You know, we look back in

U. S.

history, this is like 1812. And, you know, the

U. S.

has had the

French

, you know, we've had the Spanish, we've had the, you know, the

British Empire

, obviously. We've had all kinds of manifestations and, you know, we have our own version of our own history. You know, we might look very different, you know, from a different vantage point.

14:43

You know, think about all of the other countries of

Europe

that have got their independence from the dissolution of empires,

Poland

The Czech Republic and Slovak Republic

Finland

. You know,

Sweden

was once an empire, and had, you know, kind of basically dominion over many of these lands as well.

14:59

The

United Kingdom

, you know,

Ireland

is an independent country now as well. A lot of what's happening now is a kind of a post-colonial, post imperial impulse on the part of

Russia

, this kind of feeling that it can't possibly be lands and peoples want to go their own way.

15:15

But there must be some other malevolent force there. And when, you know, a country makes an appeal to another country, you know, for association or to, you know, different international franchise, let's put it that way and wants to be part of that, that's seen as that other entity, be it

NATO

or the

European Union

or, you know, bilateral relations with the

U. S.

or anything else, that the other, those countries are acting with malevolent force to pull them away.

15:40

So what

Putin

can't make sense of, in fact, most people are looking at it seem to not be able to make sense of, the people of

Ukraine

actually kind of want to live like people of

Ukraine

, in their own state, and make their own decisions.

15:52

If they want to associate with the

European Union

and

NATO

for their security, then a lot of that is their decision as well. So when we frame it that way, we completely and utterly negate the opinions and the beliefs and the aspirations of other people on the ground.

16:07

That's what

Putin

is trying to do all the time. So he's really doing a great job in propaganda internationally. And we feed into it all the time. And to get this framed as a conflict, a proxy conflict between

Russia

and the

United States

Russia

and

NATO

for

Ukraine

, well, why do we want

Ukraine

? People keep asking that. We don't want

Ukraine

16:27

The

United States

does not want

Ukraine

. Just to make it very clear, we don't want to annex

Ukraine

. It's not going to become like

Puerto Rico

, you know, like an additional state. We're not annexing part of it. This is not

World War 2

or the

Cold War

. We are not occupying

Europe

anymore.

Ezra Klein

16:42

There's something he's been emphasizing that seems to me to be very much part of that idea, which is, I think we're comfortable in a geopolitical moment, like this talking about security interests,

Ukraine

and

NATO

Ukraine

and the E. U.,

Ukraine

and

Russia

, arms, training. Something that

Putin

has emphasized in a number of speeches is identity.

Fiona Hill

17:02

Yes.

Ezra Klein

17:02

Language, ethnicity, and this seems, to me, to have been a profound miscalculation in exactly the way you just described. But he seems to understand

Ukraine

is full of

Russians

. I mean, of course, it does have many people who were part of

Russia

, who speak

Russian

, who identify as more ethnically

Russian

17:21

But he does, he seems to have vastly overestimated the potency and ubiquity of that identity, such that he seemed to believe he'd get a lot less resistance than he has. But also his fear, as far as I can tell from some of his speeches, is not just that

Ukraine

is going to fall into a

NATO

security umbrella, but there's going to be a Westernization or even a Ukrainianization of the identity of the

Ukrainian

people. And once that is done, then

Russia

can't get them back, because then you are just occupying the land, not reintegrating with your brothers and sisters.

17:59

And that seems very important in his thinking, and also to have been very wrong in a way that, now, if anything, he's made it even worse, right? I mean, nothing has done more for

Ukrainian

identity than this invasion. But I'm curious what you think of that, because he talks about it a lot, but I don't hear it discussed very often.

Fiona Hill

18:14

Ezra

, you're spot on. So it's very possible to be living in

Ukraine

and be somebody like

Volodymyr Zelensky

, Volodymyr being a name that would suggest, you know,

Ukrainian

nationalist version of Vladimir, by the way, after

The Great Grandparents of Kiev

that

Putin

is also fighting over, it's being fought over, the versions of the name. Volodymyr,

Ukrainian

version, Vladimir, the

Russian

version. And

Putin

is, you know, it's the battle of the Volodymyr's and the Vladimir's.

18:40

Volodymyr Zelensky

also happens to be a

Russian

speaking Jew. And I think he's blowing

Putin's

mind, because in that kind of capacity, he can't figure him out. He's trying to say that

Ukrainians

are being led by a bunch of, this is bizarre labeling, drug addled, neo-Nazi fascists.

18:59

Well, it's a little hard to say that about somebody who's completely sober, very clearly,

Volodymyr Zelensky

, and happens to be Jewish, and who has lost family in the

Holocaust

, and is very proud of his Jewish identity as well as

Ukrainian

identity, and his identity as a

Russian

speaker. And this is the problem that everybody is falling into in the modern era right now.

19:17

Putin

has been trying to put himself forward in many respects as the kind of leader, not just of the Slavic part of the world, the

Russian

part of the world, this idea of

Russkiy Mir

, all of the

Russian

speakers who are scattered around not just

Ukraine

, but also

Belarus

and northern parts of

Kazakhstan

, and elsewhere in the former

Soviet Republics

, or the

Russian

diaspora abroad, which he reaches out to.

19:39

But he's got this idea of, kind of a white,

Christian

Russian Orthodox

, you know,

Russia

, that is leading, then, you know, the kind of peoples who are opposed to these other kinds of identity politics. So he's right there in the middle of it, and I think he's talked himself in to that idea that there can only be one particular form of identity.

19:57

And just as you say, I think the main impetus for this is he saw that

Ukraine

was moving away. So what we're seeing here is almost, in a way, a kind of a battle for people to be able to espouse their own identities, as complex as they may be, because

Ukraine

is full of people from all kinds of different backgrounds.

20:16

There are many

Ukrainians

, ethnic

Ukrainians

Russia

, but who would be

Russian

speaking. There are millions of

Ukrainian

citizens working in

Russia

. And there are lots of people in

Ukraine

who speak

Russian

, but now feel a very strong identity tied to place, and to history and shared culture, especially for the last 30 years.

20:35

They don't want to go back to whatever version of

Ukraine

, or multiple versions of

Ukraine

, because it seems that

Vladimir Putin

wants to carve the whole country up, that he is presenting to them. They want the right to decide for themselves.

Ezra Klein

20:47

I want you to continue on unspooling something you began talking about there. We've talked a fair amount, so far, about what

Putin

fears. But what does he want? What does he aspire to?

Fiona Hill

20:58

Well, at this particular point, when it comes to

Ukraine

, I really fear that he aspires to punish them severely for not falling in line with his vision of what he's calling the

Russian

world of

Russkiy Mir

, and laying down their arms, surrendering, and overturning the government, so they can put in a puppet.

21:13

That's exactly where we are right now. He's made it crystal clear. Any pretense is off now. And so what he wants to do is punish them severely, and also punish us. I mean, I feared many times before that if it got to this point,

Putin

would be willing to fight to the last

Ukrainian

, or the last

Ukrainian

that's willing to, you know, stand up and hold their head high.

21:33

His aspirations, you know, w're very clearly laid out. The two documents that were submitted to the

United States

and

NATO

back in December that said no

Ukraine

NATO

, no

NATO

deployments in the lands of

Eastern Europe

, that were made after 1997, which also suggests, you know, nothing about the expansion of

NATO

into countries like

Poland

and the

Baltic States

, you know, for example. And then the

U. S.

pulling out of those same kind of territories, and if not just there, even more of a pullout out of

Europe

as well, putting, you know, the

U. S.

on notice too.

22:06

But since then, he's made other demands. Not just the full surrender of

Ukraine

, but the recognition that

Crimea

belongs to

Russia

, recognition of the breakaway republics of

Donetsk

and

Luhansk

in their full administrative borders, not just the rebel held territories, the suggestion that might be annexed too into

Russia

, because they've been given passports. And making it also very clear that he wants the neutralization, demilitarization, not just of

Ukraine

, but probably of the whole swathe of former

Soviet Republics

, unless they're in

Russia's

own alliance.

22:36

I mean, he's laid all of this out. It's the kind of maximalist position of everything that he's probably ever thought of, and that circle around him. And many of those demands go back in nationalist

Russian

circles since the very beginning, or to the very beginning, rather, of the period in the early 1990s after the dissolution of the

Soviet Union

22:54

Putin's

been picking up lots of threads, and historical threads as well, the idea of the borderlands of

Russia

, which again extend out. To be honest, you know, as far as one can, you know, think about the old writ of the

Russian Empire

, and so I have a picture that I was given, of me and a whole bunch of us sitting at that big white table with

Putin

. So

Putin

has four statues in that room. One is

Catherine The Great

. And when he talks of

Crimea

, he looks at her, because he did this with me and

Bolton

and

Huntsman

and others.

23:26

And we thought, really? Because it's, you know,

Catherine The Great

who, you know, basically annex

Crimea

. The other is

Peter The Great

, the first person who really created the

Russian Empire

in the

Battle Of Poltava

Ukraine

23:37

Catherine The Great

is also the creation of new

Russia

. And then the other two are

Nicholas The I

, who fought the debacle of the

Crimean War

, but was the hard czar who, you know, basically made the world safer for autocracy during all the uprisings of 1848.

23:52

And the other is

Alexander The Great

Alexander The I

, who chased

Napoleon

out of

Moscow

all the way to

Paris

, way across the

Elbe

. And he's got these four around him and then there's

Vladimir The Great

. And he built this big statue of

Vladimir The Great

, you know, the Prince of

Kiev

, the Grand Prince, you know outside of the

Kremlin

, when this is really

Volodymyr The Great

Grand Prince Of

Kyiv

, who, you know, is also there in

Kyiv

as well, and outside of the

Ukrainian

embassy in

London

and all the rest of it.

24:23

And so it's like a kind of a battle. And he's putting these statuary all over the place. So this is a guy who kind of, you know, you hear about

Jerusalem

syndrome of people, you know, going to

Jerusalem

and thinking the're

Mary Magdalene

, or Jesus Christ, or

John The Baptist

. And he thinks he's one of these guys. He's

Catherine The Great

. Or he's

Peter The Great

, and you know,

Vladimir The Great

. And you know, you look at that and you think, okay, you get where his headspace is.

Ezra Klein

24:47

But that is part of what makes his current position confusing to me. I can understand, particularly if you begin this fight with the view that

Ukraine

is full of

Russians

, and that they are going to welcome

Russians

back in. I understand wanting those borderlands. I understand wanting the

Old Russian Empire

back.

25:06

It is a little hard for me to understand the

Putin

who, in many ways, trenchantly critiqued some of

America's

foreign adventures as graveyards for regimes, for hgemons, wanting to on the one hand expend blood and treasure on an endless occupation of a country, a gigantic country, where many of the people don't want him there. And on the other, to the extent you fear

NATO

, to the extent you fear an aggressive

West

, to unite the

West

, to put

NATO

into entirely different posture with regard to defense spending.

25:41

To awaken

Germany

, where somebody said to me, who specialized in the region, it's usually not great for

Russia

, for

Germany

to become a military power again, historically. I can sort of understand the

Putin

theory from two months ago. It's a little harder for me to understand the end game that looks good to him now.

Fiona Hill

26:00

Yeah, and I think that's the problem. It's the same for him,

Ezra

, because I think that he completely and utterly miscalculated on a number of fronts. First of all, underestimating all of those things that you just laid out there, the

Ukrainian

willingness to resist this, you know, kind of grand plan of reincorporation, maybe dismemberment and reincorporation, and, you know, whatever else, you know, they had in mind.

26:22

Totally underestimating not just the strength of the

Ukrainian

military, but also people power in

Ukraine

, for exactly the reasons that we just talked about, that

Ukrainians

don't think of themselves as

Russians

, even those who speak

Russian

and, you know, might be ethnic

Russian

, you know, think of themselves as

Ukrainian

now. And then there's the whole, as you said,

NATO

and

European

response and global response, on the level of ordinary people suddenly waking up and thinking, hang on, we'd completely discounted this.

26:49

Isn't this the 21st century? There is the countries of the global south, as people like to call it,

Africa

and

Asia

, and others who have their own post-colonial histories, and know what it was like, you know, to have a overbearing empire, and you know, the pressure that was put down on them as they were trying to kind of breakaway in the wake of, you know,

World War 2

, or any other, you know, time in their history as well.

27:09

And then there's been, you know, the power of commerce and of the pressure that we've had on big corporations to engage in good corporate governance and social responsibility, you know, the famous

ESG

. People are getting reminded of the way that they've helped to fuel conflicts in the past, and they're pulling back, all of these, the kinds of things that

Putin

couldn't possibly have anticipated. And so the carefully laid plans of

Putin

and his men have gone awry.

27:35

And they clearly thought that this would be over and done with a couple of days. They thought that this would be very quick. They'd be making some pronouncement about

Ukraine

, now being under

Russia's

thrall. I mean, again, it sounds kind of pretty medieval, you know, in many respects as well. And, you know, the dominance, the dominion of

Russia

, and that, you know, we'd then be moving on a different place.

27:53

They didn't expect the massive backlash that they got. And so now I think he's having the same problem that you laid out. He also doesn't really know what the end game will be, beyond the end game that he already had in mind. He's still sticking to the plan.

28:07

So when

Macron

called him, President

Macron

France

, over the last several days, and said, hey, you've made a mistake.

Putin

had no other response than, no, I haven't, I'm still sticking to my plan. Because he believes that the plan is right, because he said it. And he's become so wrapped up in that he is going to now throw everything that he's got at it to make sure that he succeeds in subjugating

Ukraine

Ezra Klein

28:31

I'm worried about that last part particularly, because if he maybe began this by having goals for

Ukraine

, I presume at this point he has goals for himself and for

Russia

. And for everything that you have said and laid out about his psychology and his narrative, being humiliated at the hands of an independent

Ukrainian

uprising and the united

West

punishing

Russia

with sanctions and economic devastation, that's not how he wants to go down in history. Like he's not going to slink out of there.

Fiona Hill

29:07

No, he's not.

Ezra Klein

29:08

What does somebody with

Putin's

psychology, how do they react to this kind of quagmire that he's now in?

Fiona Hill