DeSantis Careful With Answers on if He'd Push Ukraine to Cede Land for Peace
The Florida hopeful said peace should be the goal, but “one that does not reward aggression”
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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican hopeful for president, refused to say if he would push Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cede land to Russia to bring peace and stability to Ukraine.
DeSantis was interviewed by CNN’s Jake Tapper and was asked for clarification on his stance. The Florida hopeful said peace should be the goal, but “one that does not reward aggression.”
“And there’s going to be different levers that you’re going to be able to pull. We will pull some levers against Russia,” he said.
DeSantis and Donald Trump do not appear as enthusiastic as others about the U.S. support for the Ukraine War. Trump has been vague and said he would bring the conflict to an end within 24 hours.
NUCLEAR-CAPABLE F-16s FOR UKRAINE
DeSantis refused to answer CNN in May when asked what side he hopes “wins” the Ukraine War, and he once called the conflict a “border war” … but under pressure from the establishment, he has since walked back those comments and called Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.
The Washington Post ran an op-ed in May titled, “Ron DeSantis Can’t Dodge on Ukraine Forever.”
Al Jazeera reported that DeSantis has served in the military and visited Guantanamo Bay, “where he apparently watched, laughing, as inmates were tortured.” The report said DeSantis, while in the U.S. House of Representatives, generally took a “rather orthodox Republican hawkishness” on foreign policy.
Trump has been clear in his opposition to the war in Ukraine, and has accused President Joe Biden of “pushing us further toward a World War Three.”
TRENDPOST: The establishment Republican Party—comprised of neocons—has given its stamp of approval for supporting Ukraine because they’ve been so successful at nation-building in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor, says the war is “bigger than Ukraine.”
Chris Christie, former New Jersey governor, has called Trump a “Putin puppet” and criticized President Joe Biden for not moving fast enough to provide weapons for Ukraine.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Democratic challenger up against Biden, has been critical of the U.S.’s escalatory response to the Ukraine War and accused the White House of “using Ukraine as a geopolitical pawn.”
“[Biden should] negotiate a swift end to this war that is hemorrhaging Ukrainian blood and American treasure,” Kennedy said in May.
Kennedy blamed the “neoconservatives” in the Biden administration who are hungry for proxy wars in faraway lands.
Kennedy has noted that Russia has wanted to settle.
“Let’s be honest: it’s a US war against Russia, to essentially sacrifice the flower of Ukrainian youth in an abattoir of death and destruction for the geopolitical ambition of the neocons, oft-stated, of regime change for Vladimir Putin and exhausting the Russian military so that they can’t fight anywhere else in the world,” he said.