Fiona Hill

Yeah, come on, give me another one.

And he prides himself, and he's made mistakes.

often but the breadth of you know the issues that he's often covered has been interesting has been fascinating and i used to just take you know kind of really detailed notes about this because you learn a ton but it's also about his worldview again i mean he does live in a certain box like we all do and you know again his world experience is not as extensive as you know you would hope it would be but that's why you have to really pay attention that's where we've messed up

That's where we haven't really paid a lot of attention to what he's been saying.

He's been telegraphing this grievance, this dissatisfaction, this I'm going to do something for years.

Well, you convince yourself over time.

Look, the longer you're in a position like Putin, 22 years now, come up on 23 years, could be out there for 36 years.

You become more and more rigid.

I mean, this is, again, you know, something that you see in history.

You know, you look at, you know, people through history have moved from kind of being kind of left wing and, you know, in their perspectives to hard right.

They kind of have a kind of a sort of an ossification or a rigidity emerges in their views.

I mean, again, I used to have these arguments with Professor Pice about Lenin.

because he would talk about Leninism, but he didn't change his mind from being 18.

Have you not thought about that?

I mean, it's like, we're not formed, fully formed individuals at 18.

You know, we don't know anything.

We know something, but not everything.

I mean, and obviously the younger context, you know, the kind of the way that you kind of grew up, the place you grew up, the things that happened to you, the traumas you have.

I mean, all of these have an impact.

But then if you don't grow beyond all of that, and Putin's been stuck in place since 2000, when he became president.