The Russian myth that they broadcast to the world, and have their various surrogates in the West repeat, is that somehow the West took advantage of them, that we were mean to them. That writes out of history everything Strobe Talbott and Bill Clinton tried to do with Boris Yeltsin. Strobe Talbott leaned forward doing everything he could to help the Russians, and frankly, I have little patience for the notion that we gave them nothing but bad advice.

I think that President George W. Bush was ahead of most of his government, in realizing that Putin was not the person we thought he was.

We should not assume that Russia is doomed to live according to its worst traditions. In fact, in Russian history, failed efforts at external aggression, when they fail, usually bring on areas of internal reform.

In my view, [Vladimir] Putin despises the West in general and the United States in particular, both for who we are, our liberal values, and for what we`ve done, which is to take down the Soviet Empire.

It's said that Putin can't stand Hillary Clinton. I don't know that for a fact, but it certainly looks that way, but I think her approach to Russia stands up pretty well.

[Russians] want to bring us down to make them feel better about the failure of the Soviet Union. I don`t mean bring us down as in collapse, but bring us down a notch in a big way.

Realism is important in foreign policy. You have to be realistic about what you can achieve, and about the pitfalls, and problems along the way, of which there are plenty. Nothing is easy. It's always rough.