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6 September 2024

Putin: 'A Very Savvy Gangster' Who Won't Stop at Ukraine, Says Former US Envoy to Russia John Sullivan

Michael Isikoff

During the height of the Vietnam War, the top American general William Westmoreland famously reassured policymakers in Washington that there was “light at the end of the tunnel.” But today, when it comes to another seemingly endless war, this one in Ukraine, John Sullivan, who served both Presidents Trump and Biden as ambassador to Russia, sees no flicker of light at all—only pitch black darkness.

“This is gonna be a bloody sore on the face of Europe for a long time to come,” said Sullivan in an interview for the SpyTalk podcast when asked to assess the state of the conflict.

Sullivan is the author of a fascinating new book, Midnight in Moscow, that recounts his experiences overseeing the U.S. Embassy in Russia—“behind enemy lines,” as he puts it—while Vladimir Putin launched a naked war of aggression aimed at toppling the Kyiv government of Volodymyr Zelensky and turning Ukraine into a Russian vassal state.

It was a nail-biting experience, during which Sullivan was regularly piped into secure National Security Council conference calls as the Biden White House mobilized western support to punish Moscow with economic sanctions while rushing billions of dollars worth of military hardware to Ukraine to repel the Russian invaders.

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