Quotes from Fiona Hill

I applied to Oxford in the '80s and was invited to an interview. It was like a scene from 'Billy Elliot.' People were making fun of me for my accent and the way I was dressed. It was the most embarrassing, awful experience I had ever had in my life.

Ironically, from our perspective, Russia finds Iran a stabilizing force. This is because Iran provides a counterweight to all of the Sunni Muslim powers in the region, being predominantly Shia. And Putin actually sees, and the rest of the Russian leadership, sees Iran very much as a rational actor.

President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives.

Japan has good reasons for wanting to transform its relationship with Russia. Tokyo has openly expressed serious fears of a military confrontation with Beijing over China's claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea.

People in Washington, D.C., may not be paying that much attention to what's happening in Chechnya, but people in Riyadh and Amman and elsewhere are.

There is a good supply of Russia experts out there - people who have lived there with lots of good experience - but the demand has just not been there from government.

Chechnya was part of that whole wave of entities of the Soviet Union that had a very separate sense of identity, of political and social history, that set them apart from the rest of Russia.

Putin has the ability to advance his interests in many different ways. Sometimes tactical diplomacy can help.

For Putin, Syria is all too reminiscent of Chechnya. Both conflicts pitted the state against disparate and leaderless opposition forces, which over time came to include extremist Sunni Islamist groups.

Calling Trump 'Putin's puppet' is a sign of the weakness of the American political system. It appears so weak and fragile that outsiders can actually meddle about in it.

Russia doesn't want to have a return to the situation where it was the United States and say Israel, making determinations about whether there might be a strike against Iran if the negotiations over the nuclear weapons program weren't going in a direction that they wanted to.

Putin operates like a super PAC, taking advantage of opportunities for negative campaigning. The purpose is to show that the U.S. has no moral authority.

Stop pyschoanalyzing Putin, and recognize that there is a certain mind set. The West must draw a line under 'Putinography' and just get on with it.

Every military scenario that the Russians basically engage in their annual exercises, either on their western or eastern flank, always involved some kind of local revolt pulling in outside forces.

A U.S. president who is elected amid controversy and recrimination, reviled by a large segment of the electorate, and mired in domestic crises will be hard-pressed to forge a coherent foreign policy and challenge Russia.

There is certainly this widespread anti-Americanism within the Russian elite, a feeling that the U.S. lost any moral high ground it could possibly have because of Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and increasing concern of U.S. intentions locally.

Putin has become the wild card in his own system.

The whole purpose of Russian propaganda is to show that the U.S. and U.S. politics is filled with hubris and hypocrisy and to show it is not better than anyone else.

Putin is trying to create the best possible atmosphere for Russia.

So Putin is not the dictator that he's often accused of being. He has to be very sensitive to public opinion.

And being forceful with the United States and not letting the United States have its way, is always good politics in the Russian domestic environment.

The idea is that Putin-Trump would be a win-win for the Kremlin, as they have mutual interests and alliances.

The people who run the giant companies and the government are all part of the same crowd.

The refugee problem is definitely a disaster for the entire region. Putin - the refugee problem in Chechnya was largely contained inside of Russia itself although there were tens of thousands of Chechens who sought refuge across Europe. Putin wasn't swayed by that issue when it came to Chechnya.