President Donald Trump's latest approach to the Russia-Ukraine war, in which he suggested it may be best to allow them to continue fighting for a while before there is an intervention, is "absolutely right," former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie said on Newsmax Saturday.
"There's no incentive for either side to stop," Wilkie told Newsmax's "Wake Up America Weekend," noting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy isn't losing the war.
"The Russians have suffered over 1 million casualties, and they haven't really gained much," he added. "I think in the last year, they've gained 50 miles, and the District of Columbia is 85 miles. That tells you how little they've done."
Thursday, while meeting with Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House, Trump compared Russia and Ukraine to two fighting children, reports The New York Times.
"Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy," Trump said during the Oval Office news conference. "They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart."
Wilkie said that the war is a "quasi-religious crusade" for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"He's gambled everything in his regime on absorbing Ukraine, and if you don't want to listen to what he says, look at what he's done," said Wilkie. "The barbarities, I mean, he's kidnapped over 20,000 children, Ukrainian children, and taken them back to Russia, and in the last peace talks, he offered to give back 10,000."
Putin is also preparing for a "massive human wave attack" for this summer, just based on what has been seen on commercial satellites.
Zelenskyy, meanwhile, won't sign a peace treaty at this time because he's dealing with Putin, "who's telling the world he wants to absorb Ukraine," said Wilkie.
"Knowing the way the Russians negotiate, they are playing for time," he continued. "They're going to try one last massive strike. And I think Zelenskyy agreed to President Trump's two offers of a ceasefire. It wasn't Zelensky who did it. It was Putin who blew through it … the day after the offer of ceasefire, he launched massive attacks on civilians."
Ukraine, meanwhile, is attacking Russian military sites, not civilians, said Wilkie.
"Putin's terrorizing women and children," he said. "He's taking out hospitals and schools. That needs to that that has to be added to the equation in any discussion of this."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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