Russian President Vladimir Putin's call for a 36-hour cease-fire may have been a "gimmick or a propaganda tool" for the audiences in his country, but it would have "worked well" for Ukraine to reciprocate, retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier Gen. Blaine Holt, a former deputy military representative to NATO, told Newsmax on Friday.
The cease-fire would give Russia's commanders in Ukraine a 36-hour break, Holt agreed on Newsmax's "Wake Up America," but that time period is "not that much."
"I think that on the international stage, you lose something when you say that under no circumstances will we put our guns down for even 36 hours," said Holt. "I think it would have worked well for them to have reciprocated and done the same."
The unilateral cease-fire announced by Putin officially came into force Friday, but in the hours leading up to the temporary truce, there was renewed fighting.
Ukraine rejected Putin's call as a trick, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accusing Putin of using the Russian Orthodox Christmas holiday as a ploy to halt Ukraine's forces in Donetsk and the wider eastern Donbas region from progressing while bringing in more forces from Moscow.
Holt also on Friday commented on reports that Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine's chief of defense intelligence, said earlier this week that he has information that Putin has terminal cancer and will "die very quickly."
"It's very possible," said Holt. "He's sick, but guessing that is the same as the folks who are trying to guess when the Russians are going to run out of missiles, and they should get out of that business very, very quickly."
There is also the concern about who will succeed Putin, said Holt, pointing out that even without him in power in Russia, that does not mean the war would end.
"We have to confront this as a Russia-Ukraine thing and get everybody without preconditions to a table to at least start dialogue," Holt said.
Such "prognostications" about Putin's health haven't yet come true, Holt said, but still, when Budanov sends such reports, that can "destabilize things in Moscow."
"They're hoping that people in the inner circle, the security team will latch onto that and possibly go, "Wow, the boss is weak,'" said Holt. "There's a lot of back and forth in the information."
Instead, Holt said he's more concerned with the "tractable, the very tangible, palpable military power that we see coming into this war with the hypersonic missile cruiser on its way and then also this massing forces up on the Belarusian border."
Holt also said it appears that Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko "is doing the internal things he needs to do to get that force ready to go."
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