Trump ‘incredibly concerned’ about escalation of munitions in Russia-Ukraine conflict, aide says
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is “incredibly concerned” about the escalating use of different types of weaponry in Russia’s nearly three-year war on Ukraine, his designated choice for national security adviser said Sunday.
Michael Waltz, now a Florida congressman, told “Fox News Sunday” that the decision by the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden to allow Ukraine to use anti-personnel land mines to try to halt Russia’s battlefield ground troop advances has turned the fight in eastern Ukraine into something akin to “World War I trench warfare.”
Waltz said the decision “needs to be within a broader framework to end this conflict.”
“It is just an absolute meat grinder of people and personnel on that front,” he said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said last week the United States is sending the anti-personnel mines to Ukraine because of the changing nature of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the main battlefield.
He said Russian ground troops, rather than forces more protected in armored carriers, are leading Moscow’s advance, so Ukraine has “a need for things that can help slow down that effort.”
Waltz said Trump, who takes office January 20, is concerned about the carnage but said that in the broad picture, the question that must be preeminent is, “How do we restore deterrence and how do we bring peace?”
“We need to, we need to bring this to a responsible end,” he added.
Trump has often claimed that he would end the Russia-Ukraine war even before he is inaugurated as the 47th U.S. president. Trump has never said how and refused to say during a campaign debate in September that he wants Ukraine to win.
Biden gave Ukraine authority to launch Washington-supplied missiles with a 300-kilometer range deep into Russia in response to North Korea’s dispatch of 10,000 troops to fight alongside Moscow’s forces. Within two days, Kyiv targeted weapons warehouses in Russia’s Bryansk region with the missiles.
Then, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a new experimental rocket, targeting Dnipro in Ukraine’s eastern region.
“This is a clear escalation,” Waltz said. “Where is this escalation going? How do we get both sides to the table” for peace negotiations?
Waltz, whose appointment does not require Senate confirmation, said he has been meeting with Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser. Waltz said that any U.S. adversary “is wrong” if it thinks it can “play one side off against the other” with the switch in power in Washington from Biden, a Democrat, and his long-time political foe, Trump, a Republican.
Waltz said he is “confident” Trump will restore peace “in pretty short order” in the multiple conflicts in the Middle East involving Israel fighting Iran-funded militants — Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But months of cease-fire talks on the conflict in Gaza are stalemated and talks to reach a halt in the Hezbollah-Israel fighting have yet to produce a deal.
