SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
Fiona Hill has an insider's perspective on President Trump's Russia policy. She served in his first term as the top Russia analyst. After resigning, Hill provided frank testimony before Congress during Trump's 2019 impeachment hearings, including this assessment.
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FIONA HILL: The Russian government's goal is to weaken our country, to diminish America's global role and to neutralize a perceived U.S. threat to Russian interests. President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter U.S. foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine, where Moscow wishes to reassert political and economic dominance.
MCCAMMON: In just a few weeks of his second term, President Trump has upended U.S. Russia policy and rattled NATO allies. For analysis, Fiona Hill joins us. She's now a senior fellow on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution. Welcome to the program.
HILL: Thanks, Sarah.
MCCAMMON: The White House says that progress has been made to end the war in Ukraine, which was, of course, one of Trump's campaign promises. Do you think Putin wants a deal?
HILL: Well, Putin certainly does want a deal, but on his terms. So going back to the clip that you used from the testimony, the goal of Russia for economic, political and, you know, frankly, territorial dominance in Ukraine remains. If we look back over that six years, now, since then, there's been really no change in the perception of Vladimir Putin that Russia needs to reassert itself. And it's just a question of how he was going to do that. But it's also very much related to an idea of pushing the United States out of Europe. And in that case, there is an overlap between what Vladimir Putin wants and what President Trump also seems to want. He himself seems to want to pull the United States out of Europe, not just pull the U.S. support away for Ukraine and Ukraine's ability to basically push Russia back.
MCCAMMON: I mean, Trump has said that Ukrainian president - that Zelenskyy doesn't have the cards here. How precarious is Ukraine's position?
HILL: Well, it's very precarious when the United States has decided to forego supporting it. And, you know, really what President Trump is saying here - more to the Ukrainians, but obviously to the Russians as well - is he has a lot of leverage over Ukraine. But he, frankly, has little leverage over Russia. I mean, what we've seen in this last couple of weeks - and look, I mean, we have to give President Trump credit for trying to do something here, but it's pushed by his own sense of what is necessary here, rather than a full appreciation of what Putin wants and what Putin is after.
President Trump keeps saying, this war should never have started. Well, absolutely, but who started it? It was Vladimir Putin who decided on a full-on invasion against Ukraine that then turned into the largest land war in Europe since World War II. He then says, this needless and mindless slaughter of people should stop. Well, again, Vladimir Putin doesn't seem to have had any qualms about the scale of losses on the Russian side, let alone on the Ukrainian side. So this is also part of the problem here - that President Trump is the person who's been driving the push for a ceasefire, a push to the end of the war, but he hasn't actually been approached by Russia in the first instance to actually mediate in this war.
MCCAMMON: When it comes to support for Ukraine, Europe, under pressure from Trump, has said it will step up financial and military support. Where do those efforts stand, as you see them?
HILL: Well, look, Europe has already been financially and materially supporting Ukraine. And collectively, Europe and European countries, and then you add in Japan and South Korea, have exceeded the support to the United States, contrary to what President Trump has been saying. However, it is also very true that there is a huge reliance on U.S. weapons systems, and that really comes down to the problem. The Europeans can, you know, pull together all kinds of funding. We've seen a lot of discussions about that. They can pull together some kind of expeditionary forces or other forces to assist if there is a ceasefire and, you know, some peace process. But ultimately, they can't, in the short term, replace the U.S. weapons systems. And, you know, the - all of the actions that President Trump has taken as well have started to put the Europeans in a very different place as well. They're starting to see the United States playing a more adversarial role.
MCCAMMON: When you testified before Congress in 2019, you said that you do not think, quote "long-term conflict with Russia is either desirable or inevitable." I wonder, do you still think that's the case? Do you - or do you think it is now inevitable?
HILL: Well, it's certainly not desirable, but I don't think it is inevitable. I think if you can restore deterrence - in other words, make it very clear to Russia that war doesn't work, that Putin is not going to achieve the goals that he's set out by military means - then you can change the whole course of these relationships. However, again, restoring deterrence, you know, really means that Europe itself has to build up its own military capacity, which is again going to take some time. But it also means that the United States, you know, has to be very clear about what its position is.
Right now, from the European perspective, just to be very clear here - and I'm talking to European counterparts all the time - there's a real fear that the United States has switched sides and that, in fact, you know, a war that is being waged in Ukraine, which is also for the future of Europe and European security, is now going to be basically joined by the United States taking sides with Russia - not, obviously, fighting against Europe, but certainly taking the positions that Russia has thus far taken in the war. And again, I really - obviously, the conflict is not desirable. You know, I'm with President Trump on this. And I don't, again, think it's inevitable, but you're not going to actually head things off in the future and restore a stable situation if you basically capitulate to Russia.
MCCAMMON: That's Fiona Hill with the Brookings Institution. Thanks so much for being with us.
HILL: No, thank you. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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