Donald Trump wants to emulate Vladimir Putin and “govern his own country in a similar fashion”, his former national security adviser has said.
Fiona Hill told Sky News’ The World with Yalda Hakim that the US and Russian presidents both share the same view of the world as being “divided up among three major powers; Russia, the US and China, with very clear spheres of influence”.
She said the two leaders “have shockingly similar world views”.
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“This is the first time we’ve had a US president who wants to emulate the Russian leader in some way, who wants to create a hyper-personalised presidency, who wants to basically govern his own country in a very similar fashion, very top down without any checks and balances,” she said.
Ms Hill added Mr Trump wants to “regularise, normalise and reset” the relationship between the US and Russia.
“That’s very clear, it’s been clear since the first presidency of Trump,” she said.
“He’s always wanted to sit down with Vladimir Putin and sort out all of the difficulties in the bilateral relationship, everything from nuclear issues and nuclear arms reduction – there’s all kinds of economic and business deals that Trump himself and his immediate circle are very interested in.
“That was not the direction of travel of other US presidents. So in actual fact there’s probably more chance under Trump of a close relationship between the US and Putin.”
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Ms Hill said Mr Trump has an interest in forging a “personal relationship” beyond what he already has with Mr Putin.
“He wants to extricate the United States from its support for Ukraine, he’s said that very clearly,” she said.
“He also wants to pull back from the underpinning of European security and get the Europeans to pick up not just support for Ukraine, but also much more involvement and much more in-depth payment for all of their own security, that’s also very clear.
“So there is a strategic perspective there and I think part of the US strategy and the Trump administration strategy is to push the Europeans to go off essentially on their owns in terms of framing what they want in European security and making it very clear to the Ukrainians that they can’t expect much more future support from the United States.”
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It comes as Mr Trump claimed a deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine is “very close”.
Hours after US secretary of state Marco Rubio withdrew from high-level talks in London aimed at ending the conflict, the American president heaped pressure on Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “get it done”.
