The following is the transcription of an interview with Fiona Hill, former senior director of European and Russian affairs to the National Security Council, which was broadcast on “Face The Nation with Margaret Brennan” on August 17, 2025.
Margaret Brennan: Welcome to the nation. Fiona Hill was special director of Russia and European affairs to the National Security Council during President Trump’s first term. She now joins us from Waterville, Maine. Hello to you.
Fiona Hill: Hello, Margaret.
Margaret Brennan: Well, Fiona, you were advisable during this infamous Helsinki summit in 2018. You talked about it in the past. I wonder what you think of how this Alaska summit compared?
Hill: Well, obviously very different in many ways. Partly, they decided to skip the meeting on the head and lunch. I mean, it is generally part of the type of set of summits like this. And the press conference, of course, was more an ad, or a set of ads – presentations of the two leaders. Much more by President Putin, more a comment by President Trump. There were therefore no free questions for the press, which, I am sure, was a little disconcerting for you and others who were present there in Alaska. But the optics were not exactly great, because the member of the Congress Crow presented himself for the United States and for President Trump, again, I mean, once again, but although he was presented as perhaps a demonstration of power by being in an Air Force with the fight of B-52 and other hunting jets. And so, the optics were really much more favorable to Putin than for the United States. It really seemed that Putin had established the agenda there, the story and, in many ways, the tone of the whole meeting of the summit.
Margaret Brennan: Well, saying that, you know, the president has a team of advisers around him, and in a traditional administration, these advisers would put politics, they would plan the optics and they would think about this. Do you think that the president’s team has implemented it to succeed here?
Hill: Well, look, it may well be that one of the requests, because we heard secretary Rubio, which I must say, I think it was a very fair evaluation of the place where things are. It may therefore have been that one of the Russian requests to progress more progress has been to have really been to have this kind of pump and ceremonial demonstration, which mainly marks Putin’s back to international affairs. Perhaps the Russians told them in Moscow, either Steve Witkoff, or to secretary Rubio, or to someone else, that they wanted to have a great appearance at the American bilateral summit, before moving on to half anything else in Ukraine. It is to give them all the benefit of the doubt there. But, it all depends on what comes out. And I think again, secretary Rubio clearly said it will not be easy. It certainly minimizes the expectations of a major breakthrough. But he said there was something that could be possible. I think that is what will be proof of knowing whether it was really worth all the efforts they went to Alaska or not. And as the member of the Crow Congress said, there is a fairly high bar here, because what Putin is doing is quite brutal, and he does not show, right now, any sign of abandoning anything.
Margaret Brennan: The Secretary of Defense of the United Kingdom said they would be ready to put boots on the ground in Ukraine to help supervise a cease-fire. When you hear these spoken security guarantees, and the secretary said that he was going to negotiate this tomorrow, what should we think – what form will it take? What do you think it should look like?
Hill: Well, look, I think he actually arranged this, and you did it in your questions. And I think the Congress Congress member was also very clear. It must be a combination of all the things we have already heard discussed in the program today. You must be able to have boots on the ground. The Congress member is originally that it is not to be the United States. This is actually the case. However, it must in fact be a commitment from the United States to allow European forces to hold this territory and provide security guarantees to Ukraine. The United States is essential in terms of intelligence, in terms of activation of the equipment, and the information and data we would need to make it all of this does a security intervention means something. And it is also essential in terms of all kinds of other forms of equipment and defensive weapons. We have already heard, of course, that Ukraine needed all kinds of equipment, javelins in the past, to patriots, now, in terms of integrated anti -missile defense system that Ukraine is desperately needed. So there are a lot of things that we all know to do, and what we really have to see, I think, in these meetings which will take place on Monday and in the future, is a real commitment to the United States, to work with Europeans and work with Ukraine to get there. Look, it’s existential, also for European security. Thus, minimizing the true role of Europe here, whether it is the United Kingdom, be it Poland, whether it is Finland, whether it is France, whether Germany, is not the way to follow. Europe must have a word to say in all of this. It is the future of Europe and the future of European security, not just that of Ukraine.
Margaret Brennan: I want to ask you questions about the dynamics between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. You know the two men. You have written biographies of Vladimir Putin, and of course, you served under Donald Trump. In one of the Fox interviews that President Trump made, he said that he had spoken to voting by mail in the United States with Vladimir Putin, and during this press address, Putin also said that the war would not be produced if Donald Trump had been president. I mean, it is a counterfeit, but that something that Trump often says on the track, why would these things be discussed if it was a question of Ukraine?
Hillle: Exactly. Well, look, it’s Vladimir Putin, as usual, who tries to manipulate American domestic policy. I saw him do this again and again, including in Helsinki when he sparked the president, not in the press conference, but before that, in a whole rant against his political enemies, because Putin deliberately questioned him on this subject. Putin therefore knows that President Trump wants to have recognition of his self -assertion that war would not have taken place if he had not been president. And so, Putin gives him something that plays well for President Trump in his own domestic environment. It does not play well in the international environment, where people know that things are much more complicated, but it is essentially a gift and a concession to President Trump himself. And Putin wants to sow chaos in the American electoral system before the middle. So, of course, he led to all this postal voting problem. And President Trump said in his Fox News interview that there is no country in the world that allow voting by mail. Well, Russia authorizes voting by mail, and if everyone wants to go out and look, they can look for themselves. In 2020, President Vladimir Putin signed the Russians able to vote by mail and also on the Internet. And more than 30 other countries also allow certain forms of postal voting. So it is simply not true that other countries, including Russia, do not use it. It is a pure and obvious manipulation, and it is the kind of thing that Putin likes to do.
Margaret Brennan: And, of course, I don’t think you would approve of this voting system and that these elections are faked in Russia. Correct?
Hille: Of course. And I mean, fundamentally, Putin wants to see us tie into knots from here in the middle. He tries to sow chaos, and he simply used his time with President Trump to push this. It is, once again, it is a diversion, it is a distraction, really, negotiations on Ukraine, because Putin really does not want to abandon anything, so he abandons, essentially, something that plays well in the political arena for President Trump and something that really plays for the United States in his own political arena, which is the point of voting by mail he made.
Margaret Brennan: Fiona Hill, always appreciate your analysis. Thank you for joining us today. We will be back.
