Fiona Hill

And that's why I say that, you know, I think Putin, it's again, it's the information, the way that he processes it.

I think most Russians also can't believe that they've done something wrong in Ukraine.

I mean, maybe at this point things are changing a bit, but that's why there was, you know, so much kind of support for this in a right way.

I mean, I have Russian friends, again, I said, but look what, you know, was happening in Donetsk.

Look what was, you know, the Ukrainians were doing to our guys.

you know, look what was happening to Russian speakers.

You know, we were defenders.

We were not, you know, we're not invaders.

I think, you know, again, the special military operation, you know, idea.

Now I think it's flipping, obviously, in the way that with the war going on there.

But Putin wasn't, you know, kind of looking at what would happen

I mean, most of the kind of glory parts of Russian history, when you kind of go in, you know, you chase Napoleon back to Paris, or you chase the Germans back to Berlin, you put the flag above the Reichstag.

That's a very different set of affairs.

When you've been fighting a defensive one, you've been invaded from a war where you invade someone else.

And even the most fractured populations, like you had in the Soviet Union, that rallied around in World War I, that fell apart.

I mean, the Tsar didn't manage to rally everybody around.

I mean, the whole thing fell apart.

And World War II, Stalin had to revive nationalism, including in the republics in Central Asia and elsewhere, to revive nationalism.

And Ukraine suddenly found nationalism, you know, in a kind of sense.

His country then was the Soviet Union.