New Delhi: In a television interview several years ago, Hillary Clinton, former US Secretary of State and First Lady, offered an insight into the mind of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ‘vision’ about how his country should be.
The interview took place in 2014. Russia, under Putin, had already annexed Crimea. Before that in 2008, it had invaded Georgia.
It was still early to predict that eight years later, Putin’s war machine would roll into Ukraine but Hillary, when asked what was his endgame, said that the Russian President ultimately wants to create a Eurasian Union to compete with the European Union (EU), a ‘grand vision’ that went beyond invading and annexing countries.
In the interview to Canadian television CBC, Hillary also recounted a personal story that Putin told her.
Hillary, representing the US at a formal dinner, was seated next to Putin. She told him of her visit to the memorial to victims of the Siege of Leningrad and how she was moved by what she saw.
Putin told her that it was terrible and that his parents had lived through it, she recounted.
The Russian President then shared a personal story with her.
His father, a soldier who was home for a short break during World War II, was coming down the street where their apartment was and saw a huge pile of bodies being loaded onto a cart to be taken away, Putin said.
His father looked at the pile and realised that a pair of shoes in the heap belonged to his wife. He demanded that they uncover her but the men told him that she was dead. His father said she was his wife. After an argument, they let him take the body. She was alive, Putin, who was born eight years later in 1952, told her.
Hillary has recounted the story in her book Hard Choices, although several people she shared the story with said they had not heard it before.
The former US First Lady said that Putin was very convincing in the telling and if the story was true, it offered an insight into what Putin thinks about “what it means to be Russian”, not just for Putin but for all Russians who went through purges, World War II, sieges, a period during which millions of lives were lost and then the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Hillary felt that Putin’s grand plan was to restore Russian greatness, increasing its sphere of influence from central Asia to eastern Europe.
“He has been looking for opportunities to go forward on his vision. He wants to create a Eurasian Union to compete with the European Union (EU),” she said.
