the times | Tuesday April 5 2022 3
times2
Since then, when he says that the
West has become weak and
degenerate, he means it.”
Putin sees this decline everywhere,
including the prominence of so many
women in high government positions.
“The only place they’ve got women
in politics is Elvira Nabiullina, head of
the Central Bank, and the odd person
here and there,” Hill says.
Her own ascent “from coal house to
White House” captivated imaginations
on both sides of the Atlantic as much
as her insights into Putin and Trump,
after she told Congress that “I can
say with confidence that this country
has offered me opportunities I would
never have had in England”. She
meant that she faced insurmountable
barriers in the British system for being
born in the northeast, a woman with
a strong “working-class accent” and
no family money or connections.
After a first degree at the University
of St Andrews, and Harvard, she
became a US citizen in 2002.
A firm believer that “telling personal
stories is an essential way of
connecting the vast majority of people
who don’t spend their time fixated on
foreign affairs”, her conversation is
peppered with asides about her
experiences. She took professional
advice about presenting herself before
appearing at Congress, “as someone
who barely owned any make-up
beyond some face powder and an eye
pencil”, when she sported a coiffured
bob of brown hair and “traded in my
ripped jeans and Doc Martens for
simple business attire”.
Her testimony pulled no punches
(famously revealing that John Bolton,
her boss as national security adviser,
told her he would not be “part of
whatever drug deal” two of
Trump’s lieutenants were
“cooking up” over Ukraine to
pressure President Zelensky
to investigate Joe Biden’s son).
Likewise her recent memoir
There Is Nothing for You Here
takes its title from her father’s
words exhorting her to flee
Bishop Auckland. The book
laments the continued lack of
opportunity in the northeast and
draws parallels with the American
rust belt, from where Trump drew
David Charter is the
author of What Has
the EU Ever Done
for Us?, published
by BitebackFiona Hill testifying
in Donald Trump’s
first impeachment
inquiry in 2019.
Right: Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
Below: Vladimir
PutinT
his weekend Elon Musk
suffered the great
humiliation of being turned
away from Berghain, Berlin’s
most legendary nightclub.
Never mind, Musk, it happens all the
time. Having lived in Berlin and been
granted entry to the club several times
(kudos), I have witnessed this ruthless
rejection on numerous occasions.
Berghain is openly discriminate
about who it allows to join the party. If
the bouncers — pierced, tattooed and
leather-clad — don’t like the look of
you, they shake their head, say “nein”
and gesture for you to leave the queue.
There can be no kick-back, no fuss.
You have been rejected from the gates
to techno heaven, and you must do the
walk of shame all the way back down
the long queue and call for an Uber.
Judging by his Twitter feed the
rejection occurred in the early hours
of Sunday morning — “I refuse enter”,
he tweeted cryptically (or drunkenly)
at 03.51am. Presumably Musk was
enjoying a weekend of fun after
opening Europe’s Tesla “gigafactory”
near Berlin, and fair play to the guy
because it was the right time to visit if
you want to appear in the know.
Revered, feared and infinitely
speculated about, this is a techno-
lovers’ paradise where anything goes:
if you can get in. And like it or not,
Musk, power and money won’t get you
any closer to the dancefloor or the
underground sex rooms.
There are some common guidelines
to follow, often shared smugly by
those who have been admitted and
thus achieved the ultimate in cool.
Musk, are you reading this? You must
wear all black, no brands, don’t smile,
come in a group no bigger than three,
don’t appear drunk and don’t,
whatever you do, speak English.
Every time you join the brutal,
two-hour long queue outside the
former East German power station,
your breath white in the Berlin cold,
you are signing up to the potential of
great disappointment.
The worst is when you are in a
group of three and two of you get a
“ja” and one a “nein”, which is what
happened to me when two friends
came to visit. But we were committed
to clubbing and headed back to my flat
for a costume change.
Having dressed my friend in a more
“moody-artist-in-Berlin” look, we
nervously joined the queue again and
this time they liked the look of her.
This is not a fail-safe strategy: other
friends have been literally laughed out
of the queue for trying a second time.
In reality, though, it’s nothing to do
with what you’re wearing, it’s all about
your vibe. The Berghain bouncers are
its ultimate arbiters. So let’s take a look
at Musk’s vibey credentials: a
billionaire megalomaniac
looking to colonise Mars
who two years ago
released his own techno
track with the looping
lyrics: “Don’t doubt
your vibe.” Hmm.
Might need to
rethink that
one, Musk.
Monique
RivallandNo, Elon, you
can’t come in
baptised” as a way of finding
common ground with the born-
again US president. At a later
meeting Putin told Bush: “You
have to understand, George.
Ukraine is not even a country.”
Hill says that Putin’s world
view was formed during his time
as a Cold War KGB agent in
Germany, as she wrote in her
book on the Russian leader,
co-authored with a Brookings
colleague, which Biden is known
to have read. Putin has always
believed that the US not only
wants him removed, but probably
has sleeper cells and other plots
designed to bring him down, she
says. Biden’s unscripted
exclamation at the end of his
speech in Warsaw, that “this man
cannot remain in power”, was seen
as a diplomatic gaffe by some but
would have come as no surprise in
the Kremlin. This was “just proving
what he believed all along, that the
United States is in the business of
regime change”, Hill says.
“Going back to 2011, 2012, when
he returned to the presidency and
there were mass demonstrations
on the streets of Moscow and
St Petersburg against his return, he
said even then that he believed Hillary
Clinton, when she was secretary of
state, was behind that. Part of the
motivation for intervening in the
2016 election was to give her a taste
of her own medicine, in his view.”
It is not the USSR that Putin has
long dreamt of recreating, Hill says,
but the more extensive tsarist empire.
“Initially the goal was reincorporating
Ukraine into Russia. Belorussians,
white Russians [Belarus was formerly
known as Belorussia or White Russia];
the Ukrainians used to be known as
little Russians, Malorussia. The whole
idea was that they were basically just
sub-branches of the Russia of the tsar
and [should be] all back in the fold.
Clearly when that doesn’t happen, he
now sees Ukrainians as traitors of the
Russian world and wants to remove
them as a threat.”
We were speaking before details
emerged of the mass killing of civilians
in Bucha. Her words proved grimly
prescient. “It’s just a mishmash in his
head of thinking about history and
threats emanating from the
borderlands around Russia. Now he
is moving from capture to carnage
and annihilation, I think. The Russian
view of removing a threat is to crush
it completely.”
As for the endgame, Hill simply
urges the world to keep up the
economic pressure, because Putin
only really understands force and
will exploit any weaknesses in the
coalition that has formed to oppose
him. He has seen how the West’s
desire to remove Assad in Syria
turned out, she says, following the
start of the civil war there in 2011.
“One of the things that I’ve been
reminding people is that Russia
intervened in Syria in 2015 when it
looked like Assad was going to be
toppled,” she says. “He did that
precisely to make sure that Assad was
left in place. And Assad is still there
and lives to fight another day.”
While Syria was not directly
comparable to Ukraine, “Putin has a
very high tolerance for this kind of
carnage, the loss of personnel,” she
says. “And I think he has this belief —
and we’ll just have to see if this is
tested — that Russians are going to
go along with it.”much support, as well as the former
Soviet Union’s old industrial regions.
Most of the reaction from the
northeast has been enthusiastic, she
says, although “there has been a little
bristling” from some who found their
fulfilling path locally, thank you very
much. Hill, who is married with one
child, is returning in a few days to see
family and friends for the first time in
two years and to support efforts to
increase the investment needed to
open up more opportunities. “It’s true,
of course, that some people have done
well, and I have friends who have
moved back because there is quite
beautiful countryside and everything.
But, as my dad used to say, you can’t
eat countryside,” Hill says.
“Co Durham writ large has been
selected to be on the shortlist for the
UK City of Culture 2025, and I’ve
tried to help out with this, to make the
point that there is ‘something for you
here’. But there’s still these terrible
pockets of deprivation: it’s outrageous
that you’ve still got the council estate
— really close to my house — in the
top 2 per cent of the most deprived
places in the UK. It’s that lack of
investment over all this time. I read
the levelling-up white paper and it
quite starkly lays out the problems.
The question is, is it enough?”
Hill’s prescription, beyond a serious
commitment to funding, urges those
who have experience and connections
to get involved as mentors, much as
a Scottish MP who had attended
St Andrews encouraged her to pursue
her Russian studies when she wrote to
him while considering dropping out.
That MP was George Robertson, and
she recalled “a real letter with a real
signature and real insight and advice”
in which he “encouraged me to keep
going... noting the potential of
Mikhail Gorbachev to make
significant change in the USSR”.
Robertson urged her to study
abroad. When he gave a speech
in 2002 as Nato secretary
general at Hill’s employer, the
Brookings Institution think tank,
she was able to thank him in person
for “keeping me on track”.
Soon she was advising George W
Bush, who told her how Putin told
him that he was “clandestinelyCHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES; KREMLIN/DPA