As president, Donald Trump “made it very clear” that he thought Ukraine “must be part of Russia”, his former adviser Fiona Hill says in a new book about US national security under threat from Russia and China.
“Trump made it very clear that he thought, you know, that Ukraine, and certainly Crimea, must be part of Russia,” Hill, senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US national security council between 2017 and 2019, tells David Sanger, a New York Times reporter and author of New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West.
“He really could not get his head around the idea that Ukraine was an independent state.”
This, Sanger writes, meant Trump’s view of Ukraine was “essentially identical” to that of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who would order an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a year after Trump left office.
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“Trump made it very clear that he thought, you know, that Ukraine, and certainly Crimea, must be part of Russia,” Hill, senior director for European and Russian affairs on the US national security council between 2017 and 2019, tells David Sanger, a New York Times reporter and author of New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West.
The book appears with the Ukraine war grinding into its third year but with $60bn of new US military aid to Kyiv blocked by far-right Republicans in the US House, acting in accordance with Trump’s wishes as he runs to defeat Joe Biden in a presidential election rematch and return to power.
Biden and other senior figures have also condemned Trump’s words in support of Putin, including a stunning promise to “encourage Russia to do what the hell they want” to US Nato allies he deems financially delinquent.
In Washington in February, Hill told a conference staged by anti-Trump conservatives that Trump “idolises” Putin for his autocratic leadership and longevity in power.
She also said she had spoken to European leaders at the Munich security conference, finding them nervously preparing for a possible second Trump administration.
The result of growing qualms about Trump, his attitude to Russia and other idiosyncrasies, Hill said in February, “is that [European leaders] have started to lose faith in the United States.
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