Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt told Newsmax on Saturday that the United States should not send Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying the weapons are "not the answer" as President Donald Trump moves toward renewed peace talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Holt appeared on "Saturday Report" and responded to renewed diplomatic activity involving Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and Putin.
Trump announced Thursday that he held a nearly two-hour call with Putin and that the two leaders agreed to meet in Hungary in the coming weeks to discuss potential terms to end the war in Ukraine.
The conversation came one day ahead of Zelenskyy's arrival Friday at the White House, his third visit this year, where Trump and the Ukrainian leader reviewed battlefield needs and the possibility of supplying Kyiv with Tomahawk long-range missiles.
Trump and Putin previously met in Alaska in August but did not report any meaningful progress toward a negotiated resolution. Trump attempted to stage a direct summit between Putin and Zelenskyy afterward, but Putin declined to participate.
On Thursday, Putin publicly confirmed that the newly announced Trump-Putin meeting will take place within the next few weeks.
Asked by Newsmax whether these rapid diplomatic moves may signal momentum toward a ceasefire, Holt offered a skeptical assessment of Western decision-making throughout the war.
"I think I think the term here is 'incrementalism,' and this has been the big mistake of the West's support to Ukraine.
"We wanted to see Ukraine be able to repulse the Russians right away, early on in this conflict. But it starts out with a guy named Boris Johnson, who blows up the first peace talks, and we're learning more and more about that every day," he said, referencing a former U.K. prime minister.
"But then what the West does — and this is not President Trump's fault — is they revert to a Vietnam-style strategy, if you could call it that."
Holt said Western governments created a failed pattern of fixating on new and separate weapons systems rather than enabling true combined warfare.
"Every six or seven weeks or so, the new wonder weapon is talked about.
"But I'm a military person. I'm a strategist," he said.
"Combined arms is how you win a war. Air, land, and sea is how you win a war.
"And that's not what the West did here. So they did Ukraine a disservice in how the support went," Holt said.
"And as the guy who used to run logistics for the European theater for the United States, I can tell you that they messed that whole part of that up.
"So we've got to get to a diplomatic solution. The Tomahawk is not that answer, in my view," he said.
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Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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