Former U.S. ambassador on Trump's recent moves to embrace Russia

NPR's Steve Inskeep speaks with former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul about President Trump's latest embrace of Russia and what it means for Ukraine and any hopes of peace. Transcript STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Let's ask Michael McFaul about this. He was the U.S. ambassador to Russia during the Obama administration and is now a professor of political science and a Hoover senior fellow at Stanford University, where it is ridiculously early, and yet he's gotten up to talk with us. Ambassador, welcome.MICHAEL MCFAUL: Thanks for having me.INSKEEP: And thanks for the time. The president has been so favorable to Russia that I have to ask if you think that his most recent actions amount to a shift at all.MCFAUL: Well, you're right to remind everybody that he's liked Putin for a long time. I mean, go back to the beginning of his first administration. He constantly praised Putin. He sided with him. When questioned in a very famous summit with Putin, his first one in 2018, in Helsinki, he sided with Putin and he didn't side with our own intelligence community about whether there was interference in our elections.So that piece has been consistent. What I think has changed in a profound wa...