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A former U.S. national security official issued an ominous warning on Tuesday in response to a question about whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would use nuclear weapons as a result of his ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
Fiona Hill, who testified against then-President Donald Trump during his first impeachment — which was related to allegations he illegally withheld military aid from Ukraine in exchange for a favor from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden — was confident in her answer.
“Of course, he would,” she told Times Radio in an interview that was posted online Tuesday.
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“And the thing is he has already rhetorically done it, right?” Hill continued.
“He’s put us in a position that we’ve never been before with the Soviet Union, Russia – even going back to the Cold War – when we knew that part of the military doctrine was to use nuclear weapons, and biological and chemical weapons as well, in extreme circumstances, in the context of an existential threat to the Soviet Union, which there isn’t, right now, to Russia,” she added.
She went on to compare the Russian leader’s actions to those of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who is seen as developing a nuclear weapons capability as leverage for sanctions relief.
“‘Release me from sanctions or send me food or whatever’ – this is the North Korean [tactic] – ‘or I’m going to blow you up with a nuclear weapon,'” Hill explained.
As for Putin, he has already warned the world, she said, that “‘if you don’t back down, I’m going to push the button.”
But ultimately, the former National Security Council adviser continued, Putin’s strategy will lead to nuclear weapons proliferation as other nations now not nuclear-armed will determine they need them in order to protect themselves.
“Putin’s opening it up for everyone,” she said. “So, what we really need to do here is have a full-on, full-court, diplomatic effort to push him back, and having everybody else say, ‘look, this is unacceptable,’ as well,” she told Times Radio.
“Because Putin is making the world unsafe for everyone, not just for what he might do in Ukraine itself.”
She went on to speculate that regime change in Russia was not just “unlikely,” but even speculating about it now would probably result in “an even stronger Putin.”
“It’s more likely that Putin” — who is 69 — “will die in office,” Hill concluded.
Meanwhile, The Guardian reported Tuesday that the Ukraine war could be entering a “dangerous new phase,” as evidenced by mysterious explosions in Moldova’s Russian-backed breakaway Transnistria region:
The blasts destroyed radio antennas in a Russian-garrisoned sliver of eastern Moldova along the Ukrainian border, Transnistria, which had been peaceful since a brief conflict in 1992 waged by Kremlin-backed separatists against the Moldovan army.
The separatist authorities blamed the incidents on Ukrainian infiltrators while the Kyiv government alleged they were false-flag attacks designed to provide a pretext for an infusion of Russian troops, to add to the 1,500 already based there, just as similar blasts in the Donbas preceded the 24 February Russian invasion of Ukraine.
For his part, Trump appeared earlier this month to agree with Hill that a major diplomatic effort is needed to bring Putin back from the brink of doing the unthinkable.
“It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement. If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage. This is a war that never should have happened, but it did,” the former president noted in a statement.
“The solution can never be as good as it would have been before the shooting started, but there is a solution, and it should be figured out now—not later—when everyone will be DEAD!” he added.
45: It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement… it should be figured out now—not later—when everyone will be DEAD! pic.twitter.com/2lYNYADsvh
— Taylor Budowich (@TayFromCA) April 18, 2022
