A key step toward ending the war in Ukraine would be setting a firm date for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet face-to-face, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Darin Gaub, a senior geopolitical strategist, told Newsmax on Saturday.
“Well, I think ultimately what needs to happen is that both Putin and Zelenskyy need to be able to have a date on the calendar when they’re going to get together and talk over how this thing can actually come to an end, because without that — the two chief players in this conflict — you’re never going to achieve a peace deal,” Gaub said during an interview on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America Weekend.”
Gaub’s remarks came in response to President Donald Trump’s comments during a White House press briefing on Friday, when he told reporters that he was “not happy” about reports of a Russian airstrike hitting a U.S. factory in western Ukraine or about “anything having to do with that war.”
Trump added that over the next two weeks, “we’re going to find out which way” the war will go.
Gaub said Saturday that the momentum seen in Alaska during the Trump-Putin summit and in Washington, D.C., has “suddenly crawled to at least a very slow, if not a complete stop.”
And if the Putin-Zelenskyy meeting never gets scheduled, “you’ve got a pretty massive message that at least one side or the other has no interest in stopping this war,” Gaub said.
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