Fiona Hill

That was obviously a pretty catastrophic event.

But if you look at then other parts of the ledger of what Putin was doing, you know, from the 2000s, you know, onwards, you know,

He stabilized the Russian economy, brought back confidence in the Russian economy and financial system.

He built up a pretty impressive team of technocrats for everything, the central bank and the economics and finance ministries, who really got the country back into shape again and solvent, paid off all of the debts.

And, you know, really started to build the country back up again domestically.

And, you know, the first couple of terms, again, putting Chechnya, you know, to one side, which is a little hard because, I mean, there was quite a lot of atrocities.

And I have to say that, you know, he was pretty involved in all of that because the FSB, which he'd headed previously, you know, was in charge of wrapping up Chechnya.

And it created, you know, kind of a very strange sort of system of fealty, almost a feudal system there.

And the kind of relationship between Putin at the top and Kadyrov in Chechnya, there was quite a lot of distortions, you know, kind of as a result of that in the way that the Russian Federation was run, you know, a lot more of an emphasis on the security services, for example.

But there was a lot of pragmatism, you know, opening up the country for business, you know, basically extending relationships.

I would say that, you know, by the end of those first couple of terms of Putin, Russians were living their best lives.

You know, there was a lot of opportunity for people.

People's labor was being paid for.

They weren't being taxed.

The taxes were coming out of the extractive industries.

There was, you know, kind of, I guess, a sense of much more political pluralism.

It wasn't the kind of the chaos of the Eltsin period.

And then you see a shift.

And it's pretty much when he comes back into power again in 2011, 2012.

And that's when we see kind of a different phase emerging.