I know Kurt Volker definitely to be a man of integrity.
I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s this would have impeded my professional advancement. This background has never set me back in America.
I am very confident based on all of the analysis that has been done - and, again, I don't want to start getting into intelligence matters - that the Ukrainian government did not interfere in our election in 2016.
Russia has always been very careful to try to balance the interest of the Gulf states and Iran off against each other.
Russia doesn't want to have a return to the situation where it was the United States and say Israel, making determinations about whether there might be a strike against Iran if the negotiations over the nuclear weapons program weren't going in a direction that they wanted to.
The capital city of Grozny in Chechnya was reduced completely to rubble, and Putin thought this was worthwhile because it kept the state together.
Ironically, from our perspective, Russia finds Iran a stabilizing force. This is because Iran provides a counterweight to all of the Sunni Muslim powers in the region, being predominantly Shia. And Putin actually sees, and the rest of the Russian leadership, sees Iran very much as a rational actor.
The refugee problem is definitely a disaster for the entire region. Putin - the refugee problem in Chechnya was largely contained inside of Russia itself although there were tens of thousands of Chechens who sought refuge across Europe. Putin wasn't swayed by that issue when it came to Chechnya.
Absolutely everything I've done - my research, my training, my book - was made possible due to Harvard opening doors and providing me with connections.
And Trump isn't exactly the most diplomatic of people.
Outside of the Moscow elite and a very small urban elite, Russia is one great big blue-collar country.
I tend to look at Trump as a real-estate mogul. You look at a building and say, 'I'm just going to tear that down and build up something new.' He's not exactly Mr. Preservationist.
My dad was a coal miner in County Durham.
I have worked hard and emigrated to the U.S., and I think of myself as working class but I'm probably not any more.
I got a PhD from Harvard and a few years later, there was a girl from Sunderland who hadn't got into Oxford or Cambridge, even though she'd got perfect A-levels. Harvard asked me to come and recruit her because I was recruited out of university by Harvard - they were trying to show that people could make it.
Calling Trump 'Putin's puppet' is a sign of the weakness of the American political system. It appears so weak and fragile that outsiders can actually meddle about in it.
For the United States, in particular, the South Caucasus has been a priority since the 1990s.
Our basic problem is how do we stop the hot war on the ground in Ukraine, and not get into a more and more escalatory relationship with Putin.
Stop pyschoanalyzing Putin, and recognize that there is a certain mind set. The West must draw a line under 'Putinography' and just get on with it.
Putin operates like a super PAC, taking advantage of opportunities for negative campaigning. The purpose is to show that the U.S. has no moral authority.
