"I think we can be certain that the vast majority of the cities in Ukraine are likely to be decimated and destroyed," he said. Though much remains unclear at this time, two things are certain, Abrams said. The international community, in particular NATO members, has been closely watching the conflict in hopes of preventing it from escalating beyond Ukraine's borders as well.Ī senior White House official told ABC News the administration has been discussing efforts to make sure Putin is not completely boxed in with no way out but to fight. The "Russian playbook" indicates that its military will continue to bomb and shell Ukrainian cities and "choke them out," according to Abrams - pointing to Aleppo, Syria, and Grozny, Chechnya, as examples - in order to take over and instate its own puppet government. He's pretty far from that at the moment, but that would be the scenario in which Ukraine wins," he said. "Putin might face real pressures from his population, from the economy, to backtrack, and I don't think that he would call it a retreat, but maybe he would come to terms and try to work out something diplomatically. "Three months is too long, in a sense, for Ukraine." Morale on both sidesĪs the conflict drags on and Ukraine continues to put up resistance, in particular around its capital, the "appetite for the war in Moscow might diminish," Kimmage said on "Fresh Air." "I think even in the most optimistic assessment, that the sanctions, that they will change the Russian calculus, perhaps in three, four months, possibly over the course of several years, and the war is occurring absolutely in real-time," Kimmage said in the interview. Sanctions, which have been imposed against Russian banks, oligarchs and Putin himself, are "very effective and powerful," but could take months to have an impact, Michael Kimmage, a specialist on U.S.-Russia relations who formerly served in the State Department, told NPR's "Fresh Air" last week. "And he is prepared to escalate this conflict as high as anybody wants to go," he continued. President Putin has made it clear that anybody that intervenes militarily will be treated as an enemy. "I don't think we are, I don't think it's worth the risk of that sort of level of conflict, because that's what is coming. "To those who are advocating for a no-fly zone, we just need to all ask the question, are we prepared for the consequence - basically starting World War III?" Abrams said.
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