Putin's Strategy Quotes

Putin is now nationalist. And what he does is, he tells the Russian people, OK, you may have a little less chicken in your pot, but I'm making Russia great again. Look what we're doing all other the world. Everyone is paying attention to us. And Russia is a great power, on par with the United States and others.

Donald Trump didn't even understand, right, that [Vladimir] Putin was playing him. So, in Putin's mind, I have no doubt that Putin thinks that he's an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation, although Putin would never say that.

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has embarked on a systematic challenge to the West. The goal is to weaken the bonds between Europe and the United States and among E.U. members, undermine NATO's solidarity, and strengthen Russia's strategic position in its immediate neighborhood and beyond.

[Vladimir] Putin's Russia is only indirectly concerned with the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a means of maintaining its sphere of influence. I doubt that Russia will meddle. Moreover, I'm quite sure that Ilham Aliyev won't decide to carry out any serious action - it's not in his interest. He's learned his lesson very well - threaten to take action but never act on such words.

You've gotta understand what Putin's strategy is. He really doesn't like democracy. He thinks it's an inconvenient, messy process. And he doesn't like us, and he wants to destabilize our country; sow doubt about our democracy.

Vladimir Putin understood, from the Communist era when he was a KGB officer, that the Russian propaganda system of targeting Western media - that in the digital world, you could easily pull the Western media around by a nose ring.

Putin has an obvious problem. His country's economy is in stagnation. He needs to constantly be pointing a figure at who is at fault. America is at fault. He needs to show those fronts - those directions in which he is defeating America. In Syria, for example, in Syria, he is defeating America; not ISIS, he's defeating America.

Vladimir Putin is a smart guy. I don't like him, smart guy. He is going to advance the cause of Russia until he hits a brick wall. He's hit a brick wall in a few areas. I think we need to make it clear that your growth of the former Soviet Union is over. You can be a great power that's respected. Fine. But this is not going to be the old Soviet Union.

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.

To go into Ukraine and to take over, to invade Crimea, is a huge step. And [Russian President Vladimir Putin] would only have done it with a president who has shown from the very beginning that [President Obama] is living in a fantasy world...They imagine the world as a new interconnected world where climate change is the biggest threat and they are shocked that the Russians actually are interested in territory.

After the global financial crisis of 2008, populist uprisings had sprouted across Europe. Putin and his strategists sensed the beginnings of a larger uprising that could upend the Continent and make life uncomfortable for his geostrategic competitors.

Vladimir Putin is decisive. He's committed to victory, and he now has aircraft and surface-to-air missiles and main battle tanks in Syria.

I think that Putin's strategy has been throwing a lot of money, fairly haphazardly, at a lot of projects aimed at disrupting Western relations and undermining trust in democracies. They may have gotten farther in the States than anywhere else.

Putin is a despot, and he's a very good despot. And he will see things in a narrow way. What is good for Russia? That is what he will do. If that's represented by a move toward the Baltic, that would be very dangerous, but he would do it, on the assumption that he would ask himself the question: I am prepared to fight for Estonia. Is the United States? Is Germany? Is Britain, France?

It could truly be the case that Vladimir Putin has miscalculated in the long term with his adventure in Syria.

If Vladimir Putin is conscious and aware of his standing in the world economy, he has to understand this aggression in Crimea is not helping the reputation of Russia as a modern nation where you can do business. He's back to the old Soviet ways and a lot of folks are going to hold back and pull back as a result of it. I think he may have second thoughts.

It is positive that the United States and the European Union show a great deal of unity. Putin did not expect that. He thought he could split the EU, but the opposite happened: The EU imposed sanctions and even scaled them up. Of course we need more financial and military aid, the supply of lethal weapons is of crucial importance to us.