Colonel Douglas Macgregor pleaded for a peaceful resolution to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict
Ukraine could disappear from the map unless the conflict with Russia is resolved peacefully, Trump’s former military adviser Colonel Douglas Macgregor said in an interview with Sky News Australia on Wednesday.
When asked what more could be done to help Ukraine in the ongoing military conflict, Macgregor said that “The longer this goes on, the more people will be slaughtered unnecessarily, the more Ukraine will be damaged,” he added. adding that it is now “makes it a failed state, it could be wiped off the map altogether.”
Noting that the Ukrainian army suffered huge losses during the conflict and that the Russian forces were “in no way overstretched or injured at this stage”, Macgregor argued that “we need a ceasefire” and that countries like Australia should be pushing for it since “No one in Washington will.”
“We cannot afford to fight until there are no more Ukrainians,” he added. he insisted, noting that he had heard people in Berlin, Paris and London say there was growing support for a ceasefire or coming to “some sort of arrangement” between Moscow and Kyiv.
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The former adviser also commented on the chances of Russian President Vladimir Putin agreeing to such a ceasefire, noting that he has “never been interested in all of Ukraine”, and that the territory currently under Russian control is the “Traditional Russian-speaking region.”
Macgregor noted that the Ukrainian forces that were concentrated in the Donbass region were “great concern” to Vladimir Putin, who feared these forces “would attack Russia” and the United States would “inevitably deploy theater ballistic missiles there to hold its [Putin’s] nuclear capability at risk.
“He’s not going to retire, that’s out of the question” said the former senior Pentagon adviser, suggesting that if the two sides were unwilling to reach some kind of settlement on a territorial basis, then an armistice should be concluded, lest the conflict turn into a “a wider regional war.”
Russia sent troops to Ukraine on February 24, citing kyiv’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, intended to give the Donetsk and Luhansk regions special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has since admitted that kyiv’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to save time and “to create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbas republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. kyiv insists the Russian offensive was unprovoked.
