Chuck Todd to Fiona Hill: ‘Did Putin Get More of [The Biden-Putin Summit] than We Realized?’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

TODD: “There’s some concern we may have given Putin a new status quo because he missed traps to the border of Ukraine and he got this summit. Then he pulls them back. He’s still got crimea. We got him to agree apparently not to kill navalny, but he’s still in prison. Did Putin get out of this than we realized?”

HILL: "Well, in terms of the symbolism of having a sit-down with the American president, absolutely. That is a very important win for Putin. But it’s not a win if nothing happens out of it. That’s an episodic event. He can’t take that to the bank for a long time and cash it in. He’s got to present himself at home as a great statesman because he has to subject himself to the election. We keep hearing he’s going to stay until 2036. But he’s got to show he’s still popular. In the meantime, coming up there are parliamentary elections for the Russian Duma. Basically the ruling party uniting Russia has to subject itself for re-election and they’re not looking very popular. On the back of that, Putin has a big problem with Covid and the pandemic. He’s got a lot of problems on the domestic front. He’s only got about 10% of the population vaccinated. He spent all this time being an anti-vaxer, talking down on the vaccines including astrazeneca, Pfizer, modern. Now Russians don’t want to have shots in their arms either. Putin has to figure out how to navigate things. He can’t live off an episodic meeting with the United States president in Geneva for a long time. He’s got to show something out of it. The problem with the previous administration, with President Trump for Vladimir Putin, fantastic meetings from his perspective, able to push all our political buttons, make fun of us, always have sit-downs or telephone calls, but he never got any kind of agreements. That wasn’t really all that whorl while. He has to get something out of this as well, something more than the meeting in Geneva."