‘We need to restore deterrence, restore peace, and get ahead of this escalation ladder,’ Waltz said Sunday.
President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for his national security advisor, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), said that he wants the incoming administration to bring the Russia–Ukraine war to a “responsible end.”
Washington recently reportedly authorized Ukraine’s military to use U.S.-made missiles to strike Russian territory and has agreed to supply Kyiv with landmines, marking an escalation in the war.
Late last week, Russia responded by firing an experimental missile that initially was believed to be a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile. The missile, called “Oreshnik,” is a newly produced, intermediate-range hypersonic missile.
A former special forces officer, Waltz said that Trump is “very clear about the need to end this conflict” between the two countries, which started in February 2022. Both the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have supplied the Kyiv government with tens of billions of dollars in weapons, intelligence, and other resources since the war started.
“What we need to be discussing is who’s at that table, whether it’s an agreement, an armistice, how to get both sides to the table and then what’s the framework of a deal?” Waltz also said.
In the interview Sunday, Waltz compared the Ukraine conflict to “World War I trench warfare,” and added that it is “just an absolute meat grinder of people and personnel on that front.”
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump has said that, if reelected, he would move to end the conflict within a day or a few days of taking office. He’s also decried the U.S. sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, saying domestic problems—such as illegal immigration and high inflation—need to be resolved.
President Joe Biden’s administration has said it would provide a smooth transition to the Trump administration, while senior-level White House officials have said that the U.S. government will continue to provide aid that was approved by Congress to Ukraine.
Waltz told Fox News that he had spoken with his counterpart, outgoing Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Waltz warned adversaries opposed to the United States to not take advantage of the transition period before Jan. 20, 2025, when Trump will be inaugurated.
“For our adversaries out there that think this is a time of opportunity that they can play one administration off the other, they’re wrong. … We are hand in glove,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is firmly opposed to ceding land to Russia, including the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbas region, and said last week that losing U.S. funding would lead to a defeat.
Days after the Nov. 5 election, however, Zelenskyy said that with Trump in power, it’s likely the Ukraine–Russia conflict will “end sooner.”
“Of course, with the policy of this team, who will now govern the White House, the war will be over sooner. This is their approach, their pledge to their society, and it is really essential to them.”
After last week’s escalation, which followed reports of North Korean troops entering Russia’s Kursk region, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that the war was moving towards a global conflict, though he avoided any nuclear rhetoric.
After Trump’s victory, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he is ready to discuss Ukraine with Trump when he takes power but he said that the Russian leader “has never said that the goals of the special military operation are changing. On the contrary, he has repeatedly said that they remain the same.”
“All this concerns the security interests of our country, the security interests of the Russian people living there,” Peskov said on Nov. 8. “Therefore, there was no talk of any changes here.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
