Vladimir Putin - Obama Presidency Oral History

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Vladimir Putin

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Susan Rice

...competing with China, standing up to Putin and his invasion of Ukraine, o...

Chuck Hagel

...sense of, What's Russia up to? What's [Vladimir] Putin doing? He wanted to talk about China...
...and through NATO, in responding to what Putin engineered in Crimea? That was ...
...picked that up that much. I mean, Putin had always bombastically talked abou...

Jake Sullivan

...State Department who were arguing when [Vladimir] Putin comes back, this is going to go off th...
...saying, “No, we can keep it going. Putin was behind it.” Even though [Dmitry...
...anywhere. To be fair, it was not merely Putin 's return that changed things. We ha...
...impact in 2011 on the thinking of Putin about his long-term relationship wit...
...pulled the plug on that because Putin gave him eighteen billion dollars an...

...absence of free and fair elections. Did Putin 's actions in 2013, 2014 surprise yo...

Michael Mullen

...really tough, and particularly with [Vladimir] Putin . I was there when, obviously...
...administration to their administration. Putin and [Dmitry] Medvedev were not talkin...
...agreement, but—and this surprised me— Putin needed the Russian military to sig...
...about that, because I would've expected Putin to just say, “Sign off,” and made the...
...Obama. That obviously did not work with Putin . Probably the last, if I were t...

...standpoint, after that—and we all knew Putin was in the background. It wasn'...
...at that point with Russia so that Putin would not vote actively on th...
...Council, those two would be key. So Putin abstained—so did China—from going i...
...going in there. And to this day Putin , will talk about having bee...
...and look at Chechnya, you look at what Putin has been up to and even as it ha...
...significant, I think, inflection point. Putin had expectations of what we do, and w...

William Burns

...you could already see our resurgence of [Vladimir] Putin 's Russia, the rise on a slowe...
...Medvedev,” who had just succeeded Vladimir Putin as the president of Russia, althoug...
...as the president of Russia, although Putin was clearly still the main decisio...
...that Russia was “more Medvedev's than Putin 's.” The other way around, mor...
...Putin's.” The other way around, more Putin 's than Medvedev's. Oh, sorry, yes...

...as ambassador in Moscow dealing with Putin . I had no illusion that when th...
...the artful arrangement, at least as Putin saw it, of him becoming prime minister...
...president of Russia. He knew he was in Putin 's shadow. And what better way to d...
...a relationship, some connection to Putin , still the central decision maker, s...
...moving parts in the relationship. And Putin made very clear that he didn't do vic...
...a role. So we had episodic context with Putin . The president saw him in, I think...
...it wasn't a bad meeting with Putin that President Obama had in the summe...
...I remember Secretary Clinton seeing Putin on a couple of occasions as well, an...
...relationship, and increasingly agitated Vladimir Putin , who was wondering whether th...
...Gaddafi's downfall was exhibit a for Putin , demonstrating both that Medvede...
...on those elections earned a rebuke from Putin , and seemingly changed the tone o...
...well before it. And then, of course, Putin came back. Now, he had never reall...
...Dmitry Medvedev had swapped jobs, and Putin was theoretically the number two, th...
...was a wholly owned subsidiary of Vladimir Putin . And so, Putin had become convinced...
...subsidiary of Vladimir Putin. And so, Putin had become convinced, like man...
...of middle-class Russians. Ironically, Putin had helped create the middle class i...
...the world, to free and fair elections. Putin took this personally. I think he wa...
...this as a convenience as well, because Putin always liked to point to enemies at th...
...said he was going to come back. And so Putin , who over the years had become a...
...had clearly run its course by the time Vladimir Putin decided to come back to the Kremlin a...
...across the Russian elite, not just Vladimir Putin , in my earlier experience serving i...
...political elite, and especially for Putin himself, is a deferential government i...
...agreement, and then, on the other hand, Putin 's profound interest in the Eurasia...
...as I recall it, finally succumbed to Putin 's pressure, accepted what was i...
...culture and everything else. But for Putin this was, as I said before, a zero-su...
...2014. Yanukovych, whom I always thought Putin had a very dim view of as a leader. H...
...as a leader. He thought he was a wimp. Putin 's reaction to those demonstration...
...scene came as somewhat of a surprise to Putin . The accelerating sequence of event...
...period I don't think was something that Putin or the people around him ha...
...think he was tactically surprised. But Putin reacted in the only way he knew how i...
...up two and a half million Crimeans, Putin ensured that the other forty-tw...
...2013, 2014 to address the situation as Putin had made it? Two things, I guess, I'...
...I'd say in response, Evan. First, Putin was not much in listening mode at thi...
...annexation of Crimea at this time. Putin had clearly sent Russian paramilitar...
...So there was a lot at stake here, and Putin wasn't paying much attention at all t...
...probably limited, in terms of affecting Putin 's view of the annexation of Crimea...
...the interest that some people around Putin , I think, had begun to develop about ...
...a series of sanctions that surprised Putin and the Kremlin to some extent, becaus...
...front that had a greater impact on Putin in that period, and did contribute t...
...form of annexation of the Donbass. What Putin retreated to, I mentioned before—firs...
...in Moscow, and had thought about Putin a lot and seen his policies up close—a...
...in 2016, generally how did you assess Putin 's calculus in the turn that US–Russi...
...took after the initial reset? I think Putin 's calculation, to reduce it to it...
...and even more progressive critics of Putin , thought was critical to Russia's ow...
...to Russia's own national identity. Putin had always seen himself as an apostl...
...the eyes of many Russians anyway, was Putin pushing back after a couple of decade...
...But I'm just saying that I think it was Putin 's calculus, and I think it touched ...
...political system. But it boosted Putin 's popularity for a while, and i...

Samantha Power

...never with the Russian Federation, or Vladimir Putin 's ambassador. So I knew I had a lo...
...barrel bombs. We knew that going to Putin about barrel bombs, that he couldn'...
...Russia isn't really going anywhere, Putin doesn't seem interested in that, i...
...as a shock to the Assad regime, to Putin , to me, to John Kerry, maybe even t...
...down and have a bilateral meeting with Putin . The timing of the summit i...

...been inscribed. But at the meeting with President Putin , even though our fate, or the fate, a...
...seemed set in stone, Obama mentioned to Putin , “I'd still really like to get thos...
...surprise and everyone's surprise, Putin showed interest in disabling th...
...but doesn't have a bright future. Putin , we would have thought, would hav...
...foreign policy through the ages that Putin just assumed was at work here. And so...
...happened out of that meeting is that Putin and Obama instructed John Kerry an...
...the international community, including Putin , with a sense of just how divided w...

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Vladimir Putin - Obama Presidency Oral History

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