Fiona Hill

think it's more rooted in the larger context.

I mean, individuals matter in that context, but it's kind of like this shared worldview.

And if you go back to the early 1990s, immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when Yeltsin and his counterparts in Ukraine, Belarus, pull it apart, there was an awful lot of people who wanted to maintain the Soviet Union, not just Putin.

I mean, you remember after Gorbachev tried to have the new union treaty in 1991 and there was the emergency committee set up the coup against Gorbachev.

It was because they were worried he was going too far and unraveling the union then as well.

They were opposed to his reforms.

There's always been a kind of a very strong nationalist contingent that become Russian nationalists over time rather than Soviet hardliners.

who basically want to maintain the empire, the union in some form.

And in the very early part of the 1990s, there was a lot of pressure put on Ukraine and all the other former Soviet republics, now independent states, by people around, you know, Mayor Lushkov, for example, in Moscow.

by, you know, other forces in the Russian Duma, not just, you know, Vladimir Zhirinovsky and others, but, you know, really serious, you know, kind of what we would call here like right-wing, you know, nationalist forces.

But it's, you know, pervasive in the system.

And it's especially pervasive in the KGB and in the security sector.

And that's where Putin comes out of.

Remember, Putin also was of the opinion that one of the biggest mistakes the Bolsheviks made was

getting rid of the Orthodox Church as an instrument of the state.

And so there's this kind of restorationist wing within the security services and the state apparatus that want to kind of bring back Russian Orthodoxy as a state instrument, an instrument of state power.

And they were kind of, you know, looking all the time about strengthening the state, the executive, the presidency.

And so it's everybody who takes part in that.

And it's also others who want power, honestly.

And they see Putin as their vehicle for power.