Fiona Hill previously served in the Trump administration as a top advisor on Russia and Europe. She was the senior director for Russian and European Affairs on the National Security Council and a staunch critic of Vladimir Putin.

According to Heavy – Fiona Hill took a leave of absence from the Brookings Institution to join the Trump administration in March of 2017. She held a vital position on the National Security Council as senior director for Russian and European Affairs. But in one of their very first Oval Office encounters, Trump did not recognize her.

According to the Washington Post, the president handed her a memo and told her to rewrite it, thinking she was part of the clerical staff. Hill’s response was to give Trump a confused look. President Trump reportedly interpreted this as insubordination and became very annoyed. Then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster was instructed to intervene and scolded Hill outside of the room.

Fiona Hill was never in the room during President Trump’s July 25th call with Ukraine President Zelensky.

Hill resigned before the call ever took place, yet here she is today, testifying before the Democrat Party impeachment committee about the impeachment of President Trump over a phone call she has no first-hand knowledge of.

During her testimony, Fiona Hill issued a dire warning about Russians gearing up to “repeat their interference in the 2020 election,” claiming, “We are running out of time to stop them.” In her warning, Hill called on Republicans to stop spreading conspiracies that help the Russians to undermine our elections.”

Fiona Hill hasn’t always been so hawkish on stopping the aggressive actions of the Russians, however.  In 2015, during President Obama’s second term, Fiona Hill penned an op-ed in The Washington Post, where she argued against the United States giving military aid to the Ukrainians, as a way to maintain our relations with Russia, referring to them as one of our “allies.”

The United States is on a dangerous trajectory in its relations with Russia, a nuclear superpower that believes itself to be under direct threat. Several former U.S. officials and top think-tank experts released a report calling on the West to provide military support to Ukraine. (Two of them, our colleagues at the Brookings Institution, expanded on the report a week ago on this page [“Ukraine needs the West’s help now”].) The logic of sending weapons to Ukraine seems straightforward and is the same as the logic for economic sanctions: to change Vladi­mir Putin’s “calculus.” Increasing the Ukrainian army’s fighting capacity, the thinking goes, would allow it to kill more rebels and Russian soldiers, generating a backlash in Russia and ultimately forcing the Russian president to the negotiating table.

We strongly disagree. The evidence points in a different direction. If we follow the recommendations of this report, the Ukrainians won’t be the only ones caught in an escalating military conflict with Russia.

“Anyone who argues that Putin’s wartime rhetoric is a bluff is making a very risky assumption,” Hill warned.

We face a huge challenge in devising a strategy to deal with Russia that does not fuel this escalatory cycle and puts Ukraine on another path. We also need to draw bright lines around transatlantic unity and work to preserve it. It is hard to find effective alternatives to the current sanctions policy, but if we plunge headlong into sending weapons, we may lose our allies, and we may never have the opportunity to get things right.

Daniel John Sobieski of the American Thinker wrote “Trump Gave Ukraine What Obama Withheld,” reminding everyone that Obama was the president working to help the Russians and who did nothing to help Ukraine.

In 2012, President Obama promised Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, South Korea that after his re-election he would have more “flexibility” to weaken missile defense and otherwise weaken U.S. resistance to Russian ambitions and aggressions,

In March 2009, Hillary Clinton had presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with that infamous red “reset button” to symbolize improved ties, but the gift drew smiles as the word “reset” was mistranslated into the Russian for “overcharge” Something else was lost in the translation as well, apparently, as Russian, belligerence, and intransigence continued.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in early 2014 was the direct result of Obama’s promised flexibility. The Obama-Biden administration effectively did nothing in response. That didn’t jeopardize U.S. national security?

The Washington Examiner reported: Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Putin escalated support to separatists in eastern Ukraine that resided in areas with a majority of ethnic Russians. Reserve officers in the Russian military, who also had ties to the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU, commanded the rebels in attacks. By June 2014, the Ukrainian military said that Russia had massed more than 40,000 troops on Ukraine’s border and deployed about 7,000 to 10,000 Russian soldiers inside Ukraine.

The Obama-Biden administration did nothing in response, in fact, less than nothing as it denied lethal aid Ukraine was begging for.  In 2017, Trump announced plans to reverse the policy of the Obama administration, which stood by silently when Putin’s Russia annexed Crimea and attacked Ukraine, and sell the Ukrainians lethal defensive weaponry, including anti-tank missiles designed to destroy Putin’s Russian tanks in the hands of separatist rebels

Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.


We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.