‘Putin’s whole life revolves around war – he’s manipulating Trump and doesn’t want peace,’ ex-US aide warns

Fiona Hill’s warning

Fiona Hill, a national security adviser during Donald Trump’s first administration and a prominent Russia expert, regularly attended meetings between Trump and Vladimir Putin. In an interview for The Independent’s podcast World of Trouble, she argues that Putin has effectively “got Trump’s number” and is able to mock and manipulate the US president while pursuing his own agenda in Ukraine.

War at the center of Putin’s system

Hill states that Putin’s commitment to the conflict is total, saying his economy, society, politics and personal grip on power are now bound up with keeping the war going. From her perspective, this makes it extremely unlikely that Putin will willingly abandon his campaign in Ukraine or genuinely seek a stable peace.

“His whole economy, his whole society, his whole politics, his whole preservation of self revolves around having this war go on.”

Flattery, trolling and language barriers

According to Hill, Putin flatters Trump and uses the symbolism of being among powerful world leaders to appeal to Trump’s ego. She recounts that Putin would tease Trump in Russian during meetings, while interpreters softened or “glossed over” the tone and language so that the insults did not fully register with the US president.

Hill describes one of the last encounters she observed between them at the G20 summit in Osaka in 2019, where Putin joked about changing the name of Israel. Trump, she says, missed the irony and replied literally, not picking up on Putin’s body language or the mocking delivery, while some of Trump’s aides quietly recognized that he was being trolled.

Trump, Ukraine and peace efforts

Hill’s comments come as Trump insists that “tremendous progress” has been made toward peace in Ukraine after intense diplomatic dealings. His special envoy Steve Witkoff is due to travel to Moscow with a revised plan to halt the fighting, drafted together with European leaders and Ukraine, although Putin has already demanded that Kyiv surrender large areas of territory.

Publicly, Trump has attacked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky from the start of his presidency, treating him as an inferior and blaming him for a war that Russia in fact initiated with its 2014 invasion and its full‑scale escalation in 2022. Hill suggests that this posture sits uneasily with the image of Trump as a peace‑maker in the conflict.

No secret kompromat, but shared outlook

Hill, a fluent Russian speaker who testified in Trump’s first impeachment and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution and chancellor of Durham University, has long argued that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election to undermine confidence in the presidency itself. She recalls testifying that Moscow’s goal was to cast a shadow over whoever won, rather than simply to help one candidate.

She dismisses popular theories that Trump supports Russia because the Kremlin holds compromising material on him, arguing that someone with Trump’s public record is effectively impossible to blackmail. In her view, Trump is drawn to Putin not out of fear but because he sees in the Russian leader an authoritarian peer whose approval and association enhance Trump’s own prestige.

Hill’s core message: Putin sustains his power through perpetual war and ego‑driven manipulation, and Trump’s admiration only deepens the risk of a hollow, one‑sided “peace” in Ukraine.

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The Independent The Independent — 2025-11-29

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