Fiona Hill says Putin 'doesn't think anything has gone wrong' in Ukraine and lives 'in a bubble'

The war in Ukraine has been disastrous for the Russian military on multiple levels, but Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't think anything has gone wrong, according to a top Russia expert.

The sad fact is that Putin doesn't think anything has gone wrong. I know that might sound crazy, but we can say that if he declares victory now it is very much a Pyrrhic victory.

Though the war has been devastating for Russia, Hill said that Putin still looks to adapt to the situation on the ground in order to achieve his goals. She said that the Russian leader knows that when operations don't go as planned, you have to have contingencies.

She said that Putin will find a way to meet his goals in the war, which include the dismemberment of Ukraine. Hill said that the Russian leader doesn't see Ukraine as a real country, instead viewing it as territory that historically belongs to Russia.

Putin sees himself as carrying on the legacy of the Russian tsars or emperors, Hill said, and subjugating Ukraine is a crucial part of this in his eyes.

This is a war about history. Hill said that Putin sees himself as a tsar and that he wants to regain Russia.

Russia has lost thousands of soldiers in the war in Ukraine, as well as an astonishing number of generals. Over the course of the conflict, the Russian military has struggled to make progress in areas of strategic significance. The war has led to unprecedented sanctions and unified the West in major ways, pushing historically neutral countries Sweden and Finland into the arms of NATO, which Putin has railed against for years.

Hill pointed to a number of factors when asked why Putin miscalculated. Over the past couple of years, Hill said, Putin ended up in more isolation than normal because of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The high penalty of getting things wrong is one of the reasons that Putin didn't receive solid intelligence on Ukraine.

The US and Europe have both struggled with major political divisions in recent years, so it wasn't entirely wrong for Putin to think that the West was going through a "period of incredible weakness." The war backfired and led to the West coming together to support Ukraine and counter Russia.

Hill said that Putin doesn't understand Ukraine and that he underestimated the sense of citizenship that's emerged in the former Soviet republic over the past 30 years. Hill said that the Russian leader thought that this war would be a re-enactment of successful Soviet incursions into Eastern European countries during the Cold War.