Putin Quotes

I think I'd be able to get along with Vladimir Putin.

I do respect Putin. I respect a lot of people. But that doesn't mean I'm going get along with him.

I think Vladimir Putin will give up power.

Vladimir Putin wants to become the de facto head of an illiberal, xenophobic, hypernationalist trend in world politics.

There's a gaping difference between the United States of America and Putin's Russia.

I said this right after the election - we have to remind ourselves we're on the same team. Vladimir Putin's not on our team.

I have nothing to do with Putin. I've never spoken to him. I don't know anything about him other than he will respect me.

If we build our military up to Ronald Reagan levels, [Vladimir] Putin's not going to push us anywhere because he can't match us.

I'm not going to tell [Vladimir] Putin what to do. Why should I tell Putin what to do?

I've stood up to Russia. I've taken on Putin and others, and I would do that as president.

Donald Trump has been someone who has basically taken every position that Vladimir Putin has.

I have no relationship with Putin. I don't think I've ever met him. I never met him. I don't think I've ever met him.

For Vladimir Putin to be trying to impact our elections, that - we have to - there has to be - he has to be held accountable.

As far as my relationship with President Putin is concerned, it's fine.

For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one. Putin is a serious strategist – on the premises of Russian history. Understanding US values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point among US policymakers.’

I will not speak to Vladimir Putin personally until we've rebuilt the 6th Fleet a little bit right under his nose; rebuilt the missile defense program in Poland right under his nose; and conducted a few military exercises in the Baltic states.

Russia is a mafia state today, and Putin is its top godfather.

Putin has a lot at stake here and restoring the relationship with the United States, and there are already signs as Sandy mentioned that he's moving in the right direction to begin to ascertain that their trade with Iran is not used for the production of nuclear weapons.

I don't know that Donald Trump is anything more to Putin than what Lenin called a poleznye durak, a useful idiot.

I think would send a very strong message to Putin and to Russia that NATO countries and the United States are going to respond by growing stronger economically and strategically.

That's exactly what [Donald] Trump says, Putin is a great leader. We should love Putin. He has a high popular and everybody oh, fine, you guys - oh, that's terrific.

Over the weekend, Vladimir Putin scored eight goals during a hockey game. It happened just after he had the goalie executed.

When [Vladimir] Putin goes out and tells everybody - and you talk about a relationship, but he says Donald Trump is going to win and Donald Trump is a genius, and then I have people saying you should disavow. I said, I'm going to disavow that?

If anybody is so mad at Vladimir Putin, you know what they could do? They could advocate for a gas tax. He gets all his leverage from selling gas and oil. If we had a gas tax that made that less palatable, he would be less of a player on the world stage.

I had a chance to talk with President [Vladimir] Putin and he clearly said to me very directly, "I will think about that. I will think about this challenge of how we win." Look, this is not easy for Putin. Everybody says, "Oh, Putin's made a big move." Well, Putin is [in Syria] now; and if he wants to fight ISIL alone, that's a challenge, folks.

Rex Tillerson is 's in the business of exploring and finding oil across the globe. You have to go where the oil is at, and the fact that he actually has a relationship with people like Vladimir Putin and others across the globe is something that shouldn't be - we shouldn't be embarrassed by it, it's something that I think could be a huge advantage to the United States.

I've lost some weight. I am on that new Obama diet. Every day I let Vladimir Putin eat my lunch.

Donald Trump's views on Vladimir Putin, I think, are troubling. And I don't think he fundamentally understands exactly who Vladimir Putin is or exactly what he's trying to do. So, these are the kinds of things that I think in detail you need to begin to understand.

Vladimir Putin devastates and destroys his enemies. He's been devastating and destroying the Syrian people. And Hillary Clinton spoke out against that. She had the courage to do that.

I don't think Trump is naïve about the Russians... I don't see him giving any chips away. Trump is a much better negotiator than Vladimir Putin. He is not going to be taken.

Russia, despite its heavy flirtation with capitalism and some quite unsavory oligarchs, is still building its foreign policy on the Soviet ideals of internationalism, solidarity and logic. And even domestically, President [Vladin]Putin is slowly, step-by-step, restoring many important Soviet achievements that were torpedoed by a nitwit, and one gangster - [Mikhail] Gorbachev and [Boris] Yeltsin.

If you were [Vladimir] Putin right now, you would say, hey, we're back to the old games with the United States. There's no way Trump can ever do a deal with us because the - you've got to understand, if I was just brutal on Russia right now, just brutal, you would say, oh, isn't that wonderful?

America should really wonder about a President Trump, who had a campaign manager with ties to Putin, pro-putin elements in the Ukraine who had to be fired for that reason. They should wonder when Donald Trump is sitting down with Vladimir Putin, is it going to be America's bottom line, or is it going to be Donald Trump's bottom line he's going to be worried about with all of his business dealings. This would be solved if Donald Trump would release his tax returns as he's told the American public that he would do.

In my opinion, this vicious circle will be broken by history itself. Because sticking to the current form of governance, which is to say guaranteeing the survival of [Vladimir] Putin's regime, will necessarily lead to the demise of Russia within its present borders.

President Obama is in China now for an economic summit in Beijing. The president wore a traditional purple silk shirt along with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. That's after they taught Putin how to put a shirt ON.

Because I'm on the phone, Mom!" "Fooling around with your friends again! Who is that?" "Ahmadinejad." "Oh, my goodness! What is he saying?" "That he wants to see Jeezy at the Beacon tonight. Putin's going too. He scalped a ticket from Kim Jong Il. All tha gangstas are going." "Don't be so fresh, young man!" "Gotta go," he says to me. "Enemy forces have dropped a Momshell." "Fall back, solider. Over and out.

We have, a Democrat Party once again adding to the civility of the discourse, Maxine Waters claiming that [Donald] Trump and his people are scumbags 'cause Trump wants to help [Vladimir] Putin put the Soviet Union back together by raping a bunch of other countries and stealing their resources.

There are even a few [people] who still honestly believe I sold information to [Vladimir] Putin - like personally, in exchange for asylum. And this is after the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, who gets to read the NSA's reporting on my activities every morning, said all of these conspiracies are delusional.

Edward Snowden gave a little press conference today. He is apparently seeking temporary asylum in Russia. Because, you know, when you're tired of the government snooping into everything you do, Putin's Russia is definitely the place you want to go.

If Putin likes Donald Trump, I consider that an asset, not a liability, because we have a horrible relationship with Russia.

[Vladimir] Putin's Russia is only indirectly concerned with the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan as a means of maintaining its sphere of influence. I doubt that Russia will meddle. Moreover, I'm quite sure that Ilham Aliyev won't decide to carry out any serious action - it's not in his interest. He's learned his lesson very well - threaten to take action but never act on such words.

Many politicians in the West cling to the notion of a partnership with Russia. They want to include [Vladimir] Putin, make compromises and constantly negotiate new deals with him. But history has taught us that the longer we pursue appeasement and do nothing, the higher the price will be later on. Dictators don't ask "Why?" before they seize even more power. They ask: "Why not?"

Trump is much, much worse than people understand. In his ideal world, you would have an alliance between Trump, Putin, Marine Le Pen, maybe a right winger might knock off Merkel in Germany, and you'd have this sort of, essentially, a nationalist populist alliance that can only be made sense of when seen as a right-wing, white nationalism against the world. Because, who do they want to fight? They want to fight Asia and China, they want to fight Latin America and Mexico.

There seems to be a passive alliance between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and that's unprecedented in its form and dangerous in its content, because Russia is our most dangerous geopolitical opponent because of the desires that they have in the Middle East and because of their desire to break up Europe. And in the United States, we spent a lot of blood and a lot of treasure trying to keep Europe intact and democratic, and trying to keep the Middle East from being only influenced by people who are massive fans of [Syrian President] Assad and massive fans of the Iranians.

I don't understand what the president's [Donald Trump] position is on Russia. But I can tell you what my position is on Russia: Russia is a great danger to a lot of its neighbors, and [Vladimir] Putin has as one of his core objectives fracturing NATO, which is one of the greatest military alliances in the history of the world.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Marine Le Pen seem to have no respect for the institutions that were created after World War II, and they see a potential alliance of populists around the world who would fight Islam and restore a certain semblance of traditional values.

The stated objective and the mission of Vladimir Putin's Russia is to destabilize the North Atlantic Alliance.

The thing that should most concern us is a shift in American foreign policy. We have had a bipartisan belief in American foreign policy based on the post-World War II institutions that believed in democratic global world, which Russia and the Soviet Union was often seen as hostile to. And most Republicans and Democrats have always basically believed in this world order. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and maybe Marine Le Pen do not agree with this basic structure of the world.

We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial -whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.

Putin wants to reestablish Russian greatness, not as the Cold War, but in 19th century empire terms.