The whole purpose of Russian propaganda is to show that the U.S. and U.S. politics is filled with hubris and hypocrisy and to show it is not better than anyone else.
Fiona Hill
The Russians thrive on misinformation and disinformation.
We've got ourselves into a situation where government service is somehow seen to be a political act rather than an act of civic duty or of public service.
Japan has good reasons for wanting to transform its relationship with Russia. Tokyo has openly expressed serious fears of a military confrontation with Beijing over China's claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.
Chechnya was part of that whole wave of entities of the Soviet Union that had a very separate sense of identity, of political and social history, that set them apart from the rest of Russia.
Absolutely everything I've done - my research, my training, my book - was made possible due to Harvard opening doors and providing me with connections.
President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.
Russia was dependent on China growing and driving the demand for its commodities: oil, gas and minerals. China was an alternative to Europe.
I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America.
Obama is under incredible pressure to supply arms to Ukraine.
Every military scenario that the Russians basically engage in their annual exercises, either on their western or eastern flank, always involved some kind of local revolt pulling in outside forces.
Everybody used to talk about Chechnya as a place, in the Russian imperial and Soviet periods, that was essentially governed by extended family and regional networks that substituted for older clan structures. But those networks have been destroyed.
The idea is that Putin-Trump would be a win-win for the Kremlin, as they have mutual interests and alliances.
I know Kurt Volker definitely to be a man of integrity.
I can say with confidence that this country has offered for me opportunities I would never have had in England.
The capital city of Grozny in Chechnya was reduced completely to rubble, and Putin thought this was worthwhile because it kept the state together.
Trump knows how to play the media all on his own. He creates his own Twitter feed and uses it. He knows how to get the media's attention without the benefit of a state-controlled media. He does it all on his own. Trump understands how a free media works.
I got a PhD from Harvard and a few years later, there was a girl from Sunderland who hadn't got into Oxford or Cambridge, even though she'd got perfect A-levels. Harvard asked me to come and recruit her because I was recruited out of university by Harvard - they were trying to show that people could make it.
So Putin is not the dictator that he's often accused of being. He has to be very sensitive to public opinion.
A U.S. president who is elected amid controversy and recrimination, reviled by a large segment of the electorate, and mired in domestic crises will be hard-pressed to forge a coherent foreign policy and challenge Russia.
We have politicized the issue of Russia to a point that we can't have a sensible conversation about it.
The people who run the giant companies and the government are all part of the same crowd.
There is a good supply of Russia experts out there - people who have lived there with lots of good experience - but the demand has just not been there from government.
The problem in Pankisi is an extension of broader problems throughout Georgia. The whole system is based on shady deals. The entire government is corrupt.
I applied to Oxford in the '80s and was invited to an interview. It was like a scene from 'Billy Elliot.' People were making fun of me for my accent and the way I was dressed. It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had in my life.
In the instance of Iran for Russia, Iran is a very important counterweight to the Sunni Muslim powers in the Gulf, but Russia's always been very concerned about potentially proselytizing and supporting groups inside of the Russian federation itself.
The Russians didn't invent partisan divides. The Russians haven't invented racism in the United States. But the Russians understand a lot of those divisions and they understand how to exploit them.
President Trump understands that President Putin does not like to be insulted. Putin takes it very personally. He harbors a grudge. He doesn't forget. And he will find some way of getting some degree of revenge as a result of that.
So with President Obama, he's a very different style. Very thoughtful, posed.
The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016.
I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary, and that Ukraine - not Russia - attacked us in 2016.
Because the more you engage with someone who is spreading untruths, the more validity you give to those untruths.
I am very confident based on all of the analysis that has been done - and, again, I don't want to start getting into intelligence matters - that the Ukrainian government did not interfere in our election in 2016.
Russia has always been very careful to try to balance the interest of the Gulf states and Iran off against each other.
Russia doesn't want to have a return to the situation where it was the United States and say Israel, making determinations about whether there might be a strike against Iran if the negotiations over the nuclear weapons program weren't going in a direction that they wanted to.
Ironically, from our perspective, Russia finds Iran a stabilizing force. This is because Iran provides a counterweight to all of the Sunni Muslim powers in the region, being predominantly Shia. And Putin actually sees, and the rest of the Russian leadership, sees Iran very much as a rational actor.
The refugee problem is definitely a disaster for the entire region. Putin - the refugee problem in Chechnya was largely contained inside of Russia itself although there were tens of thousands of Chechens who sought refuge across Europe. Putin wasn't swayed by that issue when it came to Chechnya.
And Trump isn't exactly the most diplomatic of people.
Outside of the Moscow elite and a very small urban elite, Russia is one great big blue-collar country.
I tend to look at Trump as a real-estate mogul. You look at a building and say, 'I'm just going to tear that down and build up something new.' He's not exactly Mr. Preservationist.
My dad was a coal miner in County Durham.
I have worked hard and emigrated to the U.S., and I think of myself as working class but I'm probably not any more.
Calling Trump 'Putin's puppet' is a sign of the weakness of the American political system. It appears so weak and fragile that outsiders can actually meddle about in it.
For the United States, in particular, the South Caucasus has been a priority since the 1990s.
Our basic problem is how do we stop the hot war on the ground in Ukraine, and not get into a more and more escalatory relationship with Putin.
Stop pyschoanalyzing Putin, and recognize that there is a certain mind set. The West must draw a line under 'Putinography' and just get on with it.
Putin operates like a super PAC, taking advantage of opportunities for negative campaigning. The purpose is to show that the U.S. has no moral authority.
Putin has the ability to advance his interests in many different ways. Sometimes tactical diplomacy can help.
The real concern for the Russians is that they're going to get closed out, that there's gong to be a new 'Iron Curtain'... for European expansion and all of its institutional forms.
There is certainly this widespread anti-Americanism within the Russian elite, a feeling that the U.S. lost any moral high ground it could possibly have because of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and increasing concern of U.S. intentions locally.
