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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 Mr 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.
Ms Hill explains that Putin uses flattery to stroke Mr 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.”
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Donald Trump greets Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, in August (AFP via Getty)
Her startling insight comes as Mr Trump claims “tremendous progress has been made” towards peace after days of frenetic diplomatic wrangling.
Mr 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, Ms Hill, an Anglo-American and now fellow at thinktank the Brookings Institute, describes how Putin knows how Mr 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 Mr Trump.
Ms Hill, a fluent Russian speaker, tells how she witnessed members of Mr 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.
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Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev, left, and Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff at talks in St Petersburg, Russia, in April (Sputnik)
“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’.
“And [he] was talking about all the things that he’d done for Israel the [recognition of the capital] to Jerusalem, a new embassy, et cetera, et cetera.
“Trump was saying they named all these things after him [in Israel] and Putin said ‘well then Donald, maybe they should just name the country after you?’”
The scene then took a bizarre turn.
Ms Hill continues: “I almost like died laughing ’cause I could see Bolton, ambassador [John] Bolton, who was still the national security adviser’s moustache twitch.
“They’d got the point that basically, he [Trump] was being trolled.”
Ms Hill explains that Putin often made similar jokes at Mr Trump’s expense but that translators “glossed over” the language and intent shown by the Russian president.
It may not have been necessary. Notoriously thin-skinned Mr Trump has shown, in recent meetings with allies and his own cabinet that fawning to him, no matter how insincere, works.
So it was in Osaka.
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In an exclusive interview with The Independent’s podcast World of Trouble, Fiona Hill reveals how Putin has ‘got Trump’s number’ (The Independent)
Ms Hill describes how Mr Trump missed the jibe and the irony behind it. He took Putin’s statement that the name of Israel should change at face value.
Ignoring “the way that Putin said it and the body language, the way he shifted in the seat”, Mr Trump replied: “Oh no that would be a bit too much that would be a bit too much.”
Ms Hill, who is chancellor of Durham University, was a witness during the US Congress impeachment proceedings against Mr Trump in 2019 and is on record as saying that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, which first brought Mr Trump to power.
“The Russians’ interests are frankly to delegitimise our entire presidency… The goal of the Russians [in 2016] was really to put whoever became the president, by trying to tip their hands on one side of the scale, under a cloud,” she said in 2019.
Talks about potential peace plans have intensified in recent weeks, with the original 28-point plan widely criticised as being pro-Russian.
From day one of his presidency, Mr Trump attacked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who he does not see as an equal and accused him of starting a war with Russia. He did not. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and in full measure again in 2022.
But Ms Hill does not believe rumours and innuendo that suggest Mr Trump has been backing Russia against Ukraine because the US president is vulnerable to Russian blackmail.
She dismisses theories that Mr Trump, a multiple felon who has been found guilty in the US of sexual assault, could be blackmailed at all. “He’s an open book – we’ve all got something on Trump!”
After a lifetime of study of Russia and working with Mr Trump she has come to a more sinister conclusion about what gives Putin his edge and influence. She believes Mr Trump likes Putin because he sees the authoritarian Russian leader as an equal. And their relationship brings the US president prestige.
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Trump shakes hand with Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, in August (Reuters)
“It is a man crush. It’s because Putin’s the badass. He’s what Trump would like to be,” she says. “Trump looks at people who are frankly in charge of everything, who have the kind of, basically, the bling. You know, they’re emblazoned in gold. And that’s what he wants to be. And he believes that he is elevated in everybody’s minds, by their association, by being in their company.
“And that’s what Putin’s got on him. Putin’s got his number. Putin realises he is a man with a very fragile ego, and that it’s somebody that can be manipulated in that way.
“Trump himself is wanting to be recognised by absolutely everybody who matters.
“And he only gets that he has the approval of people like President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia, the royal families of here, there and everywhere. For Trump, that’s what really matters, that’s the coin of the realm for him.”