Retired Brigadier Gen. Blaine Holt told Newsmax Saturday that the United States is involved in Ukraine because, as a "national security leader," it must "balance the entire equation."
"We're watching, literally, a country being ground up into nothing while this Russian army is doing nothing different than they did during the rape of Berlin at the end of WWII and that gets to the answer to your question, which is we cannot allow in the global commons, and in the world community, a grieving power with grievances, like Russia, to just say 'our grievances aren't being aired on the issue of Ukraine, we're going to brazenly cross the borders of a sovereign country and take it and attack it," Holt, the U.S. deputy military representative to NATO, told Newsmax TV's "Saturday Agenda."
"It cannot stand. And then when we look at the war crimes and the atrocities that have been committed, and the attacks on civilian targets and infrastructure, you really have to look at that. ... In America, we have lots of national security priorities, this is one of them, very high up on our list. But we have an unpredicted southern border, a very belligerent and determined aggressive China, North Korea and Iran following right behind them. There's nothing easy about being a national security leader in the United States. You've got to balance the entire equation."
Holt said the war now "only gets more deadly" and that ths Ukrainians "are very concerned that as the World Economic Forum draws near, and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy participates, he's going to hear a mouthful, privately, from a lot of heads of state in Europe: 'When is this going to end?'"
Likewise, Holt adds, Russian President Vladimir Putin will hear "the exact same thing from China and India."
In the meantime, as the deadline for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Jan. 16-20 approaches, the parties engaged in the Ukraine-Russia war, Holt predicts, will "go fiercely at it and try to lock in whatever gains they can."
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