Posted on 03/02/2022 10:47:27 AM PST by conservative98
Retired Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor joined Tucker Carlson on Fox News Tuesday to discuss the latest developments of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, noting that the first phase of Russia’s incursion is over, marking the “beginning of the end of the Ukrainian resistance.”
“The first five days, we witnessed a very slow, methodical movement of Russian forces into eastern Ukraine,” MacGregor said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Tuesday.
“So this is a — this is the beginning, frankly of the end of Ukrainian resistance,” he added.
Carlson then asked MacGregor what Putin’s endgame is in this conflict, to which MacGregor replied that it’s to take a portion of Ukraine and establish a buffer zone separating NATO with Russia.
“I think Vladimir Putin set out to honor his word of 2007,” MacGregor said simply.
“In 2007 at the Munich Security Conference, he said: We will not tolerate the expansion of NATO to a point where your NATO, your border, is touching Russia, specifically Ukraine and Georgia. We see these as essentially Trojan horses for NATO’s military power and U.S. influence, subversion and so forth.“
“He then turned to several opportunities to reinforce that over and over and over again, most recently with President Biden in the hopes that he could avoid taking action to effectively clean out eastern Ukraine of any opposition forces whatsoever, and to put his forces in a position vis-a-vis NATO to deter us from any further attempts to influence or change Ukraine into effectively a platform for the projection of U.S. and Western power into Russia.““Now, his goal, as we see it, at the moment, is to seize this entire area of eastern Ukraine. That’s pretty clear. He is going to roll up to that river, up near Kyiv, he has actually moved over the river and is preparing to go in and capture that city entirely.“
“At that point, he has to decide what else he wants to do. I don’t think he wants to go any further west. I think he’d be very satisfied to hold that point. But he would like whatever emerges from this that we call Ukraine, whether it’s just the western side or it encompasses some of the east and the west of Ukraine to be neutral, non-aligned, and preferably friendly to Moscow, that he will accept. Anything short of that, his war has been a waste of time.“
MacGregor claimed the Biden administration should then respond by telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to accept Putin’s terms because “there really is no choice.”
“I think President Biden and Sullivan, his National Security Adviser have already given some indication of their readiness to accept something like that,” he said. “They’re not going to have any choice. Either they accept it or then they put him in the position of having to do more than he would like to do, which would probably not go down well with NATO.”
“No one really wants Russian forces on their border, least of all Poland. So I think Sullivan and Biden will essentially tell Zelensky, if he is still the President at that point and if he is still running any semblance of the Ukrainian government, which is largely collapsing now. If he is still there, he is going to be told accept the deal, go neutral, because there really is no choice.”
Biden and the West can’t afford to send forces into Ukraine to push back Russian forces, so their bluster and rhetoric that they’ll take on Putin will fall apart in real time over the coming days, he said.
Your statement concerning Putin will not accept NATO on his border? BS say I Poland,Estonia,Latvia,Lithuania are all nato and on his borders
Too bad Fox can’t get Col Vindman on and get his assessment. Everyone respects Col Vindman’s opinion because he was born in Ukraine.
The Federation Council of Russia has decided to hold a meeting outside of its regular schedule on Friday, March 4.
Speculation is that there will be either a harsh new set of laws proposed to manage the crisis or the actual imposition of martial law in Russia
Doesn’t sound like a Russia that thinks it is about to enter mere mopping-up operations
Russia controls most of the eastern Ukraine. By the end of next week they will control Kiev, and we will see if Moldovia is next.
I am not sure if Putin is in trouble or not, but I do not believe the propaganda being played out in our media and news Notice how all the Ukrainian victories are in the west, and nothing out of the east.
Stories in the western media about “Russian opinion” are about as pathetic as stories in the western media about “US white nationalist opinion”.
They are made up garbage, cranked out somewhere in a basement office of a CIA disinformation section.
And MSDNC is very pro Ukrainian. Hence his assessment would be what we all want to hear.
The meessage "let Putin do whatever he wants" is ass-kissing in my book.
DOUG MACGREGOR: I guess should say it again, he has no interest in crossing the Dnieper and heding west of the Polish border. I think you'll find in these negotiations that he is quite willing to neutralize that territory on the Austrian or the Finnish model. Right now, Russia already touches Estonia and part of Latvia. White Russia [Belarus] touches Lithuania. He's not interested in going to war with us and his army is too small for that purpose and he knows it. His economy is smaller than that of South Korea. So this is not something he is looking for.We're imputing to him things he does not want to do in our usual effort to demonize him and his country.
We need to remember that Ukraine is fourth from the bottom of 158 countries in the world, at corruption. Russia is perhaps 3 or 4 places above them. This is not the liberal democracy, the shining example, that everyone says it is, far from it.
Mr. Zelensky has jailed journalists and his political opposition.
I think we need to stay out of it. The American people think we should stay out of it, the Europeans think we should stay out of it, and we should stop shipping weapons and encouraging Ukrainians to die in what is a hopeless endeavor.
TREY GOWDY: You say no sanctions or military aid, just let Russia take that portion of Ukraine that they want to take?
DOUG MACGREGOR: Yes. Absolutely.
I got him mixed up with the Guam soldier. I think he surrendered in 1972. Thanks for the clarification.
Thanks for that info. He was a tough man.
How is Russia going to be Russia in the middle of a nuclear holocaust ? At least if this is about oil/gas reserves and economic sanctions that is a problem that can be pursued to a logical conclusion.
Says the guy with people on the ground, who’s spent time there before.
So the weaker countries are just supposed to submit to a stronger neighbor who decides they want part of their country?
I don't know how MacGregor knows Putin's ultimate goals (unless Putin is e-mailing him) but he seems to want to Finlandize all of the countries that used to be part of the USSR or part of the Warsaw Pact. And he thinks that killing enough Ukrainians will bring that about.
Setting the nuclear threat aside for the moment. Right now we are not prepared to oppose him militarily, we have pathetic weak leadership both politically and militarily and the Rats have tanked our economy. Add in the nuclear threat and its unthinkable. Remember the Rats by continuing to oppose any proposed counter-ballistic missle technology (talking strategic missles!) for 50 years have made our options are very narrow.
I think from the start everyone knew, barring some miracle, the outcome, but we were, and are, uplifted by the sheer courage of the Ukrainians in the face of the odds. The only thing left to see is just how brutal Vlad will be. Threats of War Crimes Tribunals are not even going to slow him down.
What about Poland, Romania and the Baltic countries? Is it the “beginning of the end” for them as well?
Tucker Carlson should go for broke. He’s had a surrender monkey Colonel on his show. Next he can hook up with Bernie Sanders or AOC.
I have traveled to places in this world you’ve never heard of and in my job view information you will never see.
Nice try.
“I think we need to stay out of it. The American people think we should stay out of it, the Europeans think we should stay out of it, and we should stop shipping weapons and encouraging Ukrainians to die in what is a hopeless endeavor.”
Sound advice, especially for the stupid who believe otherwise.
The line north from Moldova on Lukashenko’s map is approximately the old Russian and Austro-Hungarian border.
A likely outcome is that the part east of the line will be a Russian puppet state and the part west of the line will be a non-NATO EU state, like Finland.
Note that lots of people are moving to Lviv (Lemberg) which was the center of that Austro-Hungarian province. It is also the part that is more Catholic than Orthodox.
I would accept sacrificing the top ten most populated democrat cities in exchange for taking out Moscow.
That is absolutely acceptable. /spit
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.