"What Putin came to power to do was to modernize Russia, and that does not involve a cold war with the West. Period. End of story. That’s his mission. He wants to go down in history as the man who did this. Cold war, not to mention hot war, is spoiling what he sees as his mission."

“I don’t know if there has ever been anything like this in American history... That accusation does such damage to our own institutions, to the presidency, to our electoral system, to Congress, to the American mainstream media, not to mention the damage it’s done to American-Russian relations, the damage it has done to the way Russians, both elite Russians and young Russians, look at America today. This whole Russiagate has not only been fraudulent, it’s been a catastrophe.”

“In four, maybe more decades of... studying Russian-American relations, I never really took seriously the possibility of war between the United States and Russia...”

“As we speak today, NATO is on Russia’s borders... From the Baltics to Ukraine to the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. So, what happened? Later, they said Gorbachev lied or he misunderstood. the promise was never made. But the National Security Archive in Washington has produced all the documents of the discussion in 1990. It was not only Bush, it was the French leader François Mitterrand, it was Margaret Thatcher of England. Every Western leader promised Gorbachev NATO would not move eastward.”

“Well, the first thing to remember is, is that President Obama was under enormous pressure to send military equipment to Ukraine/And why did he refuse? Well, I’m not sure what his calculation was, but the, the wisdom of not sending is clear...”

“If you’re trying to explain how the Washington establishment has dealt with Putin in a hateful and demonizing way, you have to go back to the 1990s before Putin...”

“There’s a golden moment now to be had for everybody’s security, and it’s been thwarted by this mindless… I mean, you can hate on Trump all you want, but there’s got to be a higher priority and that’s got to be international American security, and we’re letting that opportunity slip away, I fear.”