Putin doesn’t see America as weak, former US ambassador to Moscow says

WASHINGTON: Plotting a U.S. response to Vladimir Putin’s land grab in Ukraine requires an understanding that the Russian leader operates without a clear-cut foreign policy and out of “dual impulses” of asserting Moscow’s power while courting Western approval, according to an American diplomat who observed him up close for five years.

Michael McFaul, who until last month was the U.S. ambassador to Moscow and before that oversaw Russia and Eurasian matters on the White House National Security Council, told journalists in a wide-ranging briefing Friday that examining Putin’s motivations is crucial for crafting a realistic countermove to his internationally condemned occupation of the Crimea region of Ukraine.