President Donald Trump will continue to hold all the cards against Russia, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's move to launch devastating airstrikes against Ukraine just hours after their conversation, Matt Whitaker, U.S. ambassador to NATO, said on Newsmax, Sunday.
"There's no military solution for this situation, and Vladimir Putin is not going to push around Donald Trump," Whitaker told Newsmax's "Sunday Report." "The bottom line is that both sides, Ukraine and Russia, need to sit down at the table and solve this. There needs to be a diplomatic solution."
Trump, he added, has proven that he can be a peacemaker, but it will take both sides of the Ukraine-Russia conflict to decide they want the war to end, said Whitaker.
"You're losing thousands of people every week on the battlefield," he said. "Now the Russians are attacking civilians, and civilian casualties are happening, and it just needs to end."
He pointed out that the Senate is likely to pass a sanctions package against Russia, pulled together by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and co-sponsored by 80 senators.
"That's going to be significant and President Trump will continue to hold all the cards, said Whitaker.
Meanwhile, he said he was in the room at the NATO summit with Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he agrees that the Ukrainians do need continued support.
"Europe has stepped up and needs to bear the burden for most of supplying and paying for Ukraine's defense," he said. "When we got 5% last week at the NATO summit from all of our allies, and this is the reason, is because the cupboards in Europe are bare, that that, you know, the air defense systems, the missiles, the armaments and the munitions that are necessary to fight an ongoing war have been depleted significantly."
The United States, Whitaker added, must make sure that "we don't make ourselves vulnerable by giving everything we have to Ukraine."
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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.