Fiona Hill

And he is just excellent, just like Pavel Palashenko was absolutely phenomenal at interpreting Gorbachev.

Now, he didn't always interpret him accurately because Gorbachev made lots of grammatical gaffes and sometimes was, you know, Gorbachev himself would joke that Palashenko, you know, spoke better for Gorbachev than Gorbachev could himself.

But Putin is actually quite precise and careful in the way that he speaks because there's a lot of menace sometimes to things deliberately.

Other times there's lots of humor and he's telling a joke for a particular reason.

And a lot of it is, I mean, he actually uses the richness of the Russian language and the crudity of language that can't be conveyed in English.

Yeah, facial expressions, body language, the way that he sits back in the chair and slouches, the kind of the way that he makes fun of people and he, you know, kind of uses irony.

Just some of it is just lost and it needs to be conveyed.

Yeah, I mean, when I watched the,

I mean, I watched many of Putin's speeches, you know, just in Russian, not looking at any of the, you know, the subtitles or anything, and it's just watching the way that his body language is at the time when he's saying things, the way that he'll smoke, he'll sneer, he'll laugh, he'll ad-lib, you know, kind of from something that obviously kind of, you know, wasn't there on the prepared speech.

And it's really critical.

And, you know, kind of a lot, some people speak, you know, like Trump, it's just, it's kind of just words.

Putin, the words are very important.

Trump, it's the atmosphere.

It's kind of the way you feel about things.

It's the buzz you get.

It's revving people up.

It's the kind of slogans.

And Putin, he's conveying a lot in what he's saying there.

Yeah, when you watch those interviews and things with him, and I've been at many of these sessions, it's been hours of him parrying questions.

And it's like watching a boxer sparring in a kind of training bout.