Retired Col. Doug MacGregor said Sunday on FOX News about the Ukraine-Russia war:
TREY GOWDY: Why do you think Putin is doing this? What is his end game?
COL. DOUG MACGREGOR: Well, Vladimir Putin is carrying through on
something that he has been warning us about at least for the last 15
years, which is he will not tolerate U.S. forces or missiles on his
borders. Much as we would not tolerate Russian missiles or troops in
Cuba.
And we ignored him and he finally acted. He was not going to allow Ukraine, under any circumstances, to join NATO.
What is happening now is the battle in Eastern Ukraine is really almost
over, all the Ukrainian troops there have been largely surrounded and
cut off, you have a concentration down in the Southeast of 30 to 40,000
of them, and if they don't surrender in next 24 hours, I suspect the
Russians will ultimately annihilate them.
That's why Zelensy is meeting with Putin's representatives right now.
The game is over. And he's going to have to negotiate the best deal he
can get. And we've already told him, the president of the United States
has, said that if he opts for neutrality for Ukraine, we will back him.
And I think Vladimir Putin will do that for Western Ukraine.
That is Ukraine beyond the Dnieper River, but behind it in the East,
where he is now, I'm not sure what he has planned there, whether he
forms another republic [or] annexes it into Russia. Because historically
it has been Russia, but the territory in the west of Ukraine is not. He
knows that, and he is happy to live with that as a neutral state.
TREY GOWDY: I am not a military expert. I'm not even an expert on
geography, but if he takes Ukraine [which is next to] Poland, he has a
NATO country on his border. If that's what he doesn't want, then isn't
he just going to have to keep going until he runs out of NATO countries?
DOUG MACGREGOR: I guess I should say it again, he has no interest in
crossing the Dnieper and heading west of the Polish border. I think
you'll find in these negotiations that he is quite willing to neutralize
that territory on the Austrian or the Finnish model. Right now, Russia
already touches Estonia and part of Latvia. White Russia [Belarus]
touches Lithuania. He's not interested in going to war with us and his
army is too small for that purpose and he knows it. His economy is
smaller than that of South Korea. So this is not something he is looking
for.
We're imputing to him things he does not want to do in our usual effort to demonize him and his country.
We need to remember that Ukraine is fourth from the bottom of 158
countries in the world, at corruption. Russia is perhaps 3 or 4 places
above them. This is not the liberal democracy, the shining example, that
everyone says it is, far from it.
Mr. Zelensky has jailed journalists and his political opposition.
I think we need to stay out of it. The American people think we should
stay out of it, the Europeans think we should stay out of it, and we
should stop shipping weapons and encouraging Ukrainians to die in what
is a hopeless endeavor.
TREY GOWDY: You say no sanctions or military aid, just let Russia take that portion of Ukraine that they want to take?
DOUG MACGREGOR: Yes. Absolutely.
I see no reason why we should fight with the Russians over something
that they have been talking about for years, we simply chose to ignore
it. And more importantly, the population there is indistinguishable from
their own.
You know, the thing that is so disturbing, on one hand, we will not send
our forces to fight. But we're urging Ukrainians to die pointlessly in a
fight they can't win. We're going to create a far worse humanitarian
disaster than anything you've seen so far if this does not stop.