A Quote by Steve Inskeep
Putin himself is a bit of a risk taker, so the invading Ukraine, in the east in particular - Crimea was risky.
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Putin never wanted all of Ukraine. He wanted for historical purposes to take Crimea. He did. Then he wanted a part of Ukraine that he could always use to advance Russian interests. And he is now at a point where nobody in the West is shouting, hey, stop. Give us back Crimea. It's all accepted. And so he has won.
On Russia, President Trump reverses the weakness of Obama, who turned a blind eye as Putin marched into Crimea and Ukraine by hitting Putin where it hurts - on energy.
Putin could no more survive returning Crimea to Ukraine than Bibi Netanyahu could survive giving East Jerusalem back to Jordan.
We know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up Putin, to support Putin, whether it's saying that NATO wouldn't come to the rescue of allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together, because of Russia's aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine, his praise for Putin which is I think quite remarkable.
We know that Donald Trump has shown a very troubling willingness to back up [Vladimir] Putin, to support Putin, whether it's saying that NATO wouldn't come to the rescue of allies if they were invaded, talking about removing sanctions from Russian officials after they were imposed by the United States and Europe together, because of Russia's aggressiveness in Crimea and Ukraine, his praise for Putin which is I think quite remarkable.
I think, clearly, we got to work closely with China to resolve the serious problems we have, and I worry about Putin and his military adventurism in the Crimea and the Ukraine.
Hillary Clinton's Russian re-set policy gave Moscow permission to go from privately challenging U.S. foreign policy to publicly moving military hardware into Syria to prop up Bashar al-Assad and annexing Crimea from Ukraine. And Donald Trump seems to support the idea that Putin will be Putin. It's enough to leave America's allies confused.
I think Putin wants to recreate as much of the Soviet Union as he can through a variety of different means. He's invaded parts of Georgia, took Crimea, southeastern Ukraine, bases in other countries.
Russia's leader, Vladimir Putin, has managed to retain high approval ratings despite his slumping economy by seizing Crimea from Ukraine and participating in the Syrian war that is destabilizing the Mideast and, increasingly, Europe and the West.
The annexation of Crimea did undermine Ukraine to some extent, but less than it did Russia; this is a case in which the victim wins. Ukraine got rid of a region that requires massive subsidies and received international sympathy; meanwhile, Russia bit off this chunk it can't chew.
Putin described Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. These - the Russian people view Ukraine as an extension of Russia. And so there is a sense that Putin really will do whatever it takes, even in the face of overwhelming, diplomatic, and economic pressure to defend what he sees as Russia's vital interest. And I think when we're trying to understand what's going on in Ukraine we have to keep that in mind. This isn't a simple case of Putin agitating for a fight.
I'm not a big risk-taker - being bad just wasn't worth my time or the risk of having the consequences for it. So maybe I'm a little bit lame for that.
Vladimir Putin would like to have more influence in Ukraine. He would like to have Ukraine always knocked slightly off balance so that they don't know what he might do next. He would like to demonstrate that he has more power than the Ukrainians do. And so certainly by making a frozen conflict situation where Ukraine never really has a definitive sense of sovereignty over its own territory, that's in Putin's interest.
Putin has mobilized and gathered the desires of millions upon millions of people who have been lied to, cheated, who lost out in the new order of things - and in each of these people is a bit of Putin. They have come together to make the image we know as Putin. Putin himself is just the tip of an iceberg.
If you weren't a risk-taker, you were always going to be a step behind. You could be the best cyclist in the world, but if you weren't a risk-taker, you weren't going to win the Tour de France.
The Russians will always find a pretext for their aggression. It was Putin who said in 2005 that the biggest geopolitical disaster of the last century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin wants to bring Ukraine back into the Russian sphere of influence. That is why he tried everything in order to stop the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement.
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