On Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, reasoned that the United States should keep sending weapons to Ukraine in order to bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
Speaking to “Fox News Sunday” on South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s new Russian sanctions bill set for a floor vote on Monday, McCaul said, “Keep the flow of weapons going into Ukraine to pressure Mr. Putin to act in good faith. I have little confidence in him.”
Earlier in the interview, McCaul suggested that Putin “has not come to the
negotiating table” and has not called for a ceasefire like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
In late May, according to Reuters, Putin stipulated that conditions for a peace agreement must include a signed pledge from Western leaders agreeing not to enlarge NATO eastward — which ostensibly stands as the reason for the start of the war in the first place.
Regarding McCaul’s comment that Russia has not come to the negotiating table NPR reported a week before the Reuters report that Putin and Trump had spoken over the phone for two hours. While no formal agreement stemmed from the talk, the conversation between Trump and Putin marked a significant achievement following a breakdown in communication with Moscow during the Biden administration.
Putin described the conversation as “constructive” and thanked Trump for his efforts toward a diplomatic resolution.
McCaul’s conversation with Fox News later shifted from talks about sanctioning Russia to Ukraine’s drone attack on Russian warplanes to rumors that the Pentagon is reconciling how to implement its own drone program.
“I know the Pentagon’s looking at this from the standpoint of ‘How can we defend to do this?’ We don’t have the countermeasures to block these UAVs, and we need to develop those because that will be the future of warfare.”
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