Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “seems erratic,” adding he has an “ever-deepening, delusional rendering of history.”
Rice said on “Fox News Sunday” that she’s met with Putin many times, noting that he was always a “KGB man” and “calculating and cold.”
Today, however, he is very different, she said.
“He seems erratic,” Rice said. “There is an ever-deepening, delusional rendering of history, it was always a kind of victimology of what had happened to them, but now it goes back to blaming Lenin for the foundation of Kyiv in Ukraine. So he’s descending into something that I personally haven’t seen before.”
Rice said she wants to make sure that Putin does not try to connect Kaliningrad, which is between Poland and Lithuania, to the rest of Russia by going through the Baltic states.
“We have to make sure he really understands that the cost would be extraordinary to try to cross an Article 5 line,” she said, noting that Baltic states are part of NATO and have its protection.
She also expressed support for the sanctions against Putin and Russia over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, saying that the U.S. should “concentrate on making him pay the highest cost for what he has already done.”
Rice said if Putin does not believe he can achieve his objectives, there may be a chance he scales back his ambitions.
“Putin expected an easy win here,” she added. “The reality has been quite the opposite.”