Dr. Fiona Hill, a former advisor within the Trump administration, has some serious concerns that democracy in the U.S. is becoming seriously derailed and may be on a path similar to that of Russia as Donald Trump continues to dominate the Republican Party.

Dr. Hill sees real similarities between Trump’s takeover of the GOP and that of Russia’s situation under President Vladimir Putin, The Independent reports.

“The United States and Russia are obviously very different, so right from the beginning I don’t want to suggest that I’m equating the United States and Russia,” Hill told The Independent. “But it’s just the way the autocratic systems develop, so that when the checks and balances in your political system fail to work and where you end up with a presidency that basically has no other counterweight in the system.”

From 2017 to 2019, Hill served the Trump Administration as a senior director for European and Russian affairs for the National Security Council. She is an esteemed scholar on Russia who has written extensively about Putin. She found herself on the international stage thanks to her testimony before Congress during Trump’s first impeachment hearing.

“What we saw in Russia in the 1990s where there were political parties, there were checks and balances in the system, because the state and the presidency were quite weak,” Hill said. “And when Putin came in, in the 2000s, and he spent an awful lot of time consolidating the presidency, and basically making the president the central feature of the Russian constitution, and also basically making the presidential election just a sort of a popular vote.”

Hill said she believes Trump has taken some similar steps with the Republican Party. And this is news that definitely doesn’t sound good.

“And in fact, in the path that we’re heading, because Trump wants to get rid of, and he said it openly, term limits,” she noted.  “He basically wanted to retain power, even though he’d lost the election. He wants to get rid of any opposition, including within the Republican Party.”

Hill also added that Trump’s efforts to regain the presidency aren’t just due to the “Big Lie” about the election being stolen, indeed, public opinion also plays a part.

“It’s a direct relationship between him and his voters, his base, which is very similar in Russia,” she said.

Hill is the author of the new book There’s Nothing for You Here: Opportunity In an Age of Decline, a largely autobiographical book that tells of growing up in England’s working-class coal country and how she made her way to working inside the Trump administration. But her book also offers a stern warning because people really don’t understand how bad the situation regarding Trump really is.

“We’ve got an ongoing coup attempt against American democracy. It’s not against Joe Biden or the presidency,” she noted. “But say it’s against America, an attempt to usurp power in the hands of a minority, and a kind of cult personality culture, around one person.”

She may very well be right. Hill is an expert on how political situations like the one we’re currently in work. Now that Trump is no longer president many of us have tended to ignore him. Perhaps that’s not a good idea.