Europe’s leaders are a “big impediment” to President Donald Trump’s work toward brokering a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, according to retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt, who told Newsmax, Sunday, he has doubts about whether the president will be able to bring an agreement between the warring nations.
“I appreciate the president’s optimism and his stick-to-itiveness, but he’s got a big impediment called the European leaders,” Holt said on Newsmax’s “Sunday Report.”
The White House has denied accounts from European sources who claimed, according to a Wall Street Journal report, that he had told them Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn’t want to end the war.
But Holt said that the Europeans “just want more weapons and more money for the war to continue,” and they’re not helping to reach a deal.
“Now Russia is getting ready for a major offensive,” said Holt. “Every single visual indicating that we have is that Russia is now going to solve this on the battlefield, and I’m quoting [Russian Defense Minister Sergey] Lavrov when I say that.”
This means there are “very dangerous days ahead, he added.
“We had two big resignations of significant commanders from the Ukrainian military,” Holt said. “It’s not a good situation.”
A second guest, Brigitte Gabriel, a political strategist and founder of ACT for America, said that the war is not ending because Putin is only interested in power and capturing territory.
“He is actually ramping it up,” she said. “He’s ramping up recruitment by the tens of thousands, sending his own men with less than one month of training into the battlefield, and they are dying by the tens of thousands. He doesn’t care about his own people, let alone the lives of the people from the other country.”
The only way to solve the war, she added, is to sanction China, which is supporting Russia by supplying weapons.
Trump has said that he is ready to walk away if the negotiations remain deadlocked, and Holt agreed that if Europe won’t follow the president’s leadership, then he “should walk away.”
“All the pieces in the world right now are interlocking,” Holt said. “China is imploding right now. We may see a civil war erupt there. So I don’t view them as particularly relevant here. I do view that Russia is probably going to want to take territory right on up to the East River … Europe has to solve this if they’re not going to follow President Trump’s trying to guide it to a peaceful solution.”
Gabriel said she believes economic pressure may be a solution, but Holt said such moves have been exhausted with Russia.
“Russia is now calculating that they’re going to get access to the European Commons anyway after this whole thing is over, because Europe has deindustrialized itself,” he said.
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