Fiona Hill

Ukraine was a catastrophic blunder.

I mean, he did this full-on invasion in Ukraine, not expecting it to be all the things that you've described.

This wasn't intended to be the largest military action in Europe since World War II.

It certainly wasn't intended to last longer than the Soviet Union was battling Nazi Germany, which that's the threshold, as you point out.

We just passed this month.

I mean, that is just remarkable.

It was supposed to be a special military operation.

In many respects, it was supposed to be something along the lines of

of what the Trump administration just pulled off in Venezuela, a decapitation, thinking that they would remove Zelensky and they'd probably get, in fact, what the United States government is angling to get in Venezuela, a pliable alternative leader who might have actually come out of the same system.

And it would be business as usual for them, not basically new forms of business for Ukraine.

So it's been an absolute disaster.

But the point is,

that Putin is something of what one might call a survivalist and a prepper.

I mean, he's basically been building up resources.

He's been thinking long and hard about what it takes for Russia to be more resilient, even though it is quite brittle in terms of its political system and in terms of what we see unfolding there in Ukraine.

You can't keep this up forever.

But Putin has marshaled resources and all the capabilities of Russia to the point, I mean, heavily militarized the economy, heavily militarized the whole system.

He has this vertical of power that enables him to do all kinds of things that other leaders cannot, even Trump.

You can't sue Vladimir Putin, you know, as you can currently still sue the United States government.

But his bet is that because of these changes in international circumstances, especially because of the incumbent in the White House, that he will be able to last everyone else out.