Russian President Vladimir Putin will use his meeting with President Donald Trump to "further his aggression" against Ukraine, former U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Jim Gilmore told Newsmax on Friday.
Gilmore appeared on "Wake Up America" about the time Trump departed the White House to board Air Force One and head to a meeting with Putin in Alaska for discussions about a possible ceasefire deal for Ukraine.
While Trump has said his goal is to end the Russia-Ukraine war, Gilmore said Putin is not interested in peace.
"I don't believe that there's going to be any kind of result could possibly come out of this meeting, because Putin is simply using it to continue his aggression," Gilmore told host Sharla McBride.
"This is part of his [Putin's] war."
Gilmore added Putin wants to "try to move things forward to his ultimate objectives," which include controlling all of Ukraine.
After video showed Trump explaining how the U.S. forced Ukraine to pay for $350 billion that former President Joe Biden's administration spent "so foolishly" to fund Kyiv during the war, McBride asked Gilmore whether the U.S. was "changing course" with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's country.
"Well, we can't tell yet," the former Virginia governor said. "Already this sort of reducing the issue down into dollars and cents and, you know, CPA type of activities, is good for Putin because he wants to emphasize the costs to the to the American taxpayer.
"But frankly, the American taxpayer has always looked after their own interests. And our interests, in fact, are not to allow Putin to conquer another country. If he is allowed to conquer Ukraine by force, it opens the door to more of that in the 21st century, until eventually the U.S. will end up having to be involved somewhere with their own forces."
He added that although Friday's Trump-Putin summit "is the moment when that can all be avoided," Gilmore remained pessimistic.
"That means that Putin has to withdraw from Ukraine. We know he won't. So this war is probably going to continue," he said. "The question is, what's going to happen in the future to allow the Ukrainians to win? And I think they can win because I think the Russian economy is collapsing. They're pariahs across the entire world. The Russians are not really ahead of the game here, other than incremental advances on the battlefield."
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Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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