On T&G on Sunday with Carole Walker, Lord Ricketts, former diplomat and UK national security advisor said that Vladimir Putin was not well advised as he pursed a military invasion of Ukraine.
He described how Putin was when he met him in 2002. He said: "He wanted to work with the West, that seemed clear. David Cameron went to see him in 2010, when he was then prime minister for a few years.
"He was by then already a colder, harder and more autocratic man. And I think you're right that in recent years, he's been very isolated.
"He's been obsessing about a sense of humiliation of Russia in those post-Cold War days, and has now got an absolute fixation on reducing Ukraine to a vassal status, a kind of buffer zone between Russia and what he sees as the adversary in NATO.
"But I don't think he's getting good advice. I don't think anyone dares give him honest advice, and either about the extent to which the Ukrainians would fight or the impact on Russian public opinion."
Listen to Lord Rickett's full interview with Carole Walker on Times Radio.
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