Condi Rice: Ukraine war 'will not end well' for Putin, Russia will turn into 'large North Korea'

One year into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Condoleezza Rice would tell Vladimir Putin the war "will not end well" for him, if she was offered the chance to deliver a message to the Russian leader directly, the former secretary of state said Friday.

His war, she would tell Putin, is isolating Russia internationally, turning his country into a "large North Korea," Rice said at a panel discussion on U.S. Russia policy at the Brookings Institution.

"His international standing, about which he does care — that's why he keeps inviting people to Moscow — his international standing is subordinate to Xi Jinping," Rice said, "and so if I could send him a message, I would say: 'You have lost what you had hoped, and the fact is you will now, if you continue down this road, your country will be a large North Korea. Is that what you're looking to do?'" 

Rice said Putin used to take "great pride in the Russia that was a part of the international system."

Rice, National Security Advisor under former President George W. Bush, was asked about the odds of Russia and China forming a strong alliance in the future.

"I do think they have alignment," she said. "I believe it's probably temporary. There are inherent tensions because Vladimir Putin doesn't play second fiddle very well. And Xi Jinping is clearly first violinist here, and so I think that's an interesting tension."

There are "ethnic tensions" between China and Russia to consider, said Rice, who served on the National Security Council staff as senior director of Soviet and East European Affairs under President George H. W. Bush.

"The Russians are not known for their tolerance of or respect for Asian populations," she said, citing the history of the Mongol hordes as an example.

"And so I do think there are tensions there, and we ought to try to exploit them," she said.

By 2008, it was already "very clear" to her that Putin had a "broader agenda," said Rice, relating an anecdote from that time. Putin was invited to the NATO-Russia Council in Bucharest, where the Republics of Georgia and Ukraine were discussed, she recounted. She usually tried to listen to Putin when he was speaking in Russian because he spoke "much more harshly than anybody had interpreted," Rice noted. "He said Ukraine is a made-up country, and I remember thinking, 'Did I hear that right? Did he just say it's a made-up country?'" 

On one of her last visits to Putin, she recalled, "he said: 'Condi, you know us. Russia has only been great when it's been ruled by great men, like Peter the Great, and Alexander the Second.' Now, he didn't say Catherine the Great. She was a woman, I guess she didn't count. He also didn't say Lenin or Stalin.

"And it was very obvious then that to him the greatness of Russia was in its empire, and how dare the communists — you remember when he gave the speech just before the invasion — how dare Lenin and Stalin make the mistake that broke up the Russian Empire? And so, I think his imperial tendencies were beginning to become evident, but perhaps not soon enough."