Fiona Hill, a former U.S. National Security Adviser under President Donald Trump, has claimed that the president seeks to govern the United States in a manner similar to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking during an appearance on Sky News’ The World with Yalda Hakim, Hill said Trump envisions a “hyper-personalised presidency” with minimal checks and balances, emulating Putin’s top-down leadership style.
She explained that the American and Russian presidents both shared the same view of the world as being “divided up among three major powers; Russia, the US and China, with very clear spheres of influence”.
“This is the first time we’ve had a US president who wants to emulate the Russian leader in some way, who wants to create a hyper-personalised presidency, who wants to basically govern his own country in a very similar fashion, very top down without any checks and balances,” Hill said.
Hill was deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on Trump’s National Security Council staff between 2017 and 2019 during his first term in the White House.
She was then appointed a defence advisor to the UK government after the general election in 2024.
Hill also claimed Trump wanted to “regularise, normalise and reset” the relationship between the US and Russia.
“That’s very clear, it’s been clear since the first presidency of Trump,” she said.
“He’s always wanted to sit down with Vladimir Putin and sort out all of the difficulties in the bilateral relationship, everything from nuclear issues and nuclear arms reduction – there’s all kinds of economic and business deals that Trump himself and his immediate circle are very interested in.
“That was not the direction of travel of other US presidents. So in actual fact there’s probably more chance under Trump of a close relationship between the US and Putin.”