Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia under former President Barack Obama, is slamming President Joe Biden for his refusal to provide Ukraine with missiles that can reach Moscow, saying the move will prolong the war.
"I just think it's a losing strategy," McFaul, now an MSNBC analyst, told network anchor Katy Tur Monday. "There will only be an end to this war in three different scenarios. One, Putin conquers all of Ukraine. Two, Ukraine pushes Russia out of Ukraine. Or three, there's a stalemate on the battlefield."
The United States, he added, should support either Ukraine pushing Russia out or that there is a stalemate.
"The way you do that is to give the Ukrainians what they need to achieve one of those two outcomes," said McFaul.
His comments come after he posted a tweet on Sunday stating that "some of us want to increase arms to Ukraine as a means to hasten a diplomatic solution. Not arming Ukraine prolongs the war."
The former ambassador also told Tur that there were some tense debates going on in the Biden administration about the war, and suggested that the advanced missile system be given to Ukraine, but with a formal agreement with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that they not be used in Russia.
The Ukrainian president had requested Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS) and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS).
"I think that's a better solution than sitting in Washington and trying to modulate and calculate exactly what we want Ukrainians to do on the battlefield," said McCaul.
He also addressed the continuing threat of escalation if the more advanced systems are sent.
"This threat of escalation, we've been talking about this for over three months," he said. "We keep hearing that we do this, we do that, we do this, we do that — [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin is going to escalate. And yet what is the evidence about? If the escalation is going to take place inside Ukraine, shouldn't we trust the Ukrainians to know their security interests better than we do?"
Last week, reports indicated that the Biden administration was planning to allow long-range missile systems to be sent to Ukraine, but on Monday, the president told reporters that "we are not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that can strike into Russia."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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