Amid the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, Erik Prince, the founder and former CEO of private military company Blackwater, warned on Sunday that Kyiv should give up on any hopes of reclaiming its annexed territories from Moscow if it wants an end to the conflict.
The Russia-Ukraine war has raged on for more than two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the "special military operation" in Ukraine in February 2022. Although Moscow aimed for a quick victory over its Eastern European neighbor, viewed as having a much smaller military, its spirited defense effort bolstered by Western aid, has blocked it from making substantial gains.
"There's no good outcome to this war," Prince said during an appearance on Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. "It needs to deescalate and be done. There's no chance that Ukraine is going to retake its lands—the Donetsk, Luhansk, the areas in the east, certainly not Crimea."
He added: "It's been a fool's errand for the last year-and-a-half, and all we're doing is wiping out the next generations of Ukrainian men and Russian men. For that matter, imagine if there was this kind of border clash with Mexico and there were Russian provided weapons being fired inside the United States. There's no way we would tolerate that."
Prince said that he hopes "President-[elect] Trump can get on it, literally from day one" and that the war "needs to be brought to an end by adults."
Newsweek has reached out by email to the U.S. State Department and the Trump transition team for comment on Sunday morning.
Russia initiated its 2022 invasion of Ukraine by sending its forces into the breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk, expanding its claim on Ukrainian lands beyond Crimea, which Russia took in 2014.
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on the promise that he could end the war "in 24 hours" should he return to office and hit the ground running by calling Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky within days of his presidential election victory.
The conflict has continued to escalate, however, as both sides ramped up their efforts in unexpected ways. Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into Russia in early August, making significant headway into the Kursk region where its forces have remained.
Russia then enlisted the help of North Korea, deploying between 10,000 and 12,000 elite fighters from Pyongyang, which in turn prompted the U.S. to authorize Ukraine to use American-supplied Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) to strike into Russian territory. Zelensky had begged the U.S. for authorization to use such weapons in this way for at least the past year.
Russia retaliated with the launch of a new intermediate-range ballistic missile at central Ukraine, which Moscow claimed was an experimental hypersonic weapon.
During his Sunday appearance on Fox News, Prince blamed President Joe Biden for exacerbating the situation, calling the decision "grossly irresponsible" as Biden is set to leave office in January.
"It's like a drowning man grabbing at any rope that might be available to him, thinking that it might somehow push the Russians to play nicer or something," he said.
Prince added: "The fact is, the Russians fired a ballistic missile. They carried nine warheads, going Mach 9, that there is no means to shoot down, and even with non-nuclear [weapons], the kinetic force is enormous, and those could have just as easily—it was a reminder by the Russians. We can smack you anywhere with nukes, and maybe that's what's coming next. So, this is not a game that needs to be played any longer."
Trump has not explained how he would quickly end the ongoing conflict, but Vice President-elect JD Vance outlined a potential approach Trump will take to end the war on The Shawn Ryan Show in September.
"I think what this looks like is Trump sits down, he says to the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans: You guys need to figure out what does a peaceful settlement look like? And what it probably looks like is the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine, that becomes like a demilitarized zone," he said.
Meanwhile, former North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commander James Stavridis predicted on CNN's Smerconish earlier this month that Putin "will end up with about 20 percent of Ukraine, the chunk that he currently holds, but the rest of Ukraine, the 80 percent, all those resources, vast majority of the population, they stay democratic, free."
However, Stavridis told Newsweek at the time, "Keep in mind that a negotiated settlement is not something the U.S. can impose—but for the Ukrainians and Russians to agree upon."
Stavridis believes the deal would include Ukraine's ability to join NATO and maybe the European Union (EU) while Vance said that Ukraine "doesn't join NATO, it doesn't join some of these sort of allied institutions" as part of the potential peace deal.
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