Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not end his aggression into Ukraine until he "recreates the Russian Empire."
Speaking with Margaret Brennan on "Face the Nation," Gates, who served as Defense secretary under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said that despite the recent ceasefire discussions, Putin won't stop until Ukraine is part of Russia.
President Donald Trump has been hoping to meet with Putin in person to discuss conditions on bringing the war to an end. When asked by Brennan if one could realistically interpret Putin's intensions by looking him in the eye, Gates responded, "I'm not sure even in a face to face that you can judge Putin's intention.
"My own view, having dealt with him and having spent most of my life working on Russia and the Soviet Union, is Putin feels that he has a destiny to recreate the Russian Empire. And as my old mentor, Zbigniew Brzezinski once said, 'Without Ukraine, there can be no Russian Empire.'"
On Friday, representatives from Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey to discuss a possible ceasefire. It was the first meeting between the two nations since Russia invaded Ukraine over three years ago. The discussions barely lasted an hour and did not yield any meaningful results, according to a Ukrainian representative.
"I think the president is — based on what I read — is getting the sense that, as he put it, that Putin is 'tapping' him along and Putin hasn't given up on any of his original goals in Ukraine," Gates said, referring to an April post by President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform.
"He's going to insist on occupying all four of the eastern provinces of the Donbas, perpetual recognition of Russian ownership of Crimea, a pro-Russian government in Kyiv and a Ukrainian military that looks a lot like an enhanced police force. And no membership in NATO and probably no membership in the EU," Gates said.
Gates noted that Putin has dealt with three years of unrelenting sanctions from much of the Western world and nearly 1 million of his own troops killed or injured, yet his will to keep the war going persists.
"He wants Ukraine, basically, to be a client state of Russia, and I don't see what it would take to get him to walk away from any of those goals in the foreseeable future," Gates said. "I mean, when you look at 900,000 or so Russian soldiers that have been killed or wounded, he's paid a huge price — the Russian economy and so on."
"It hasn't deterred him in the slightest," Gates concluded.