Donald Trump 'wants to emulate Vladimir Putin', his former national security adviser claims

Donald Trump wants to emulate Vladimir Putin, his former national security adviser has said.

The US president’s relationship with the controversial Russian leader has previously been blasted as “creepy”, and according to Fiona Hill, it comes from a place of admiration.

Hill formerly served as a national security adviser to Trump and told Sky News that Trump hopes to “govern his own country in a similar fashion” to Putin in Russia and argued the two powerful leaders “have shockingly similar world views”.

“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 explained on the Sky News programme The World With Yalda Hakim.

Between 2017 and 2019, during Trump’s first stint in the White House, Hill served as deputy assistant to the president and was also the senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council.

Hill is currently a defence advisor to the UK government, appointed after Labour’s 2024 election win.

She claimed it has been Trump’s long-time goal to “regularise, normalise and reset” America’s relationship with Russia.

“That’s very clear, it’s been clear since the first presidency of Trump,” Hill said.

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“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.”

Her comments come as Trump lashed out at “boasting” Ukrainian president Zelensky after he made it clear he would not legally recognise occupied Crimea as Russian.

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