If Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to hold out past President Donald Trump’s shortened deadline for a ceasefire with Ukraine, Trump will most likely repeat his first-term playbook and “break the Russian economy,” with sanctions on oil exports, former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie said on Newsmax Saturday.
“I think we’ll see an enhanced replay of what President Trump did in the first administration, which was really to break the Russian economy, break the Russian banking system, but this time, the impact will be on the one thing that Russia exports,” said Wilkie on Newsmax’s “Saturday Agenda.”
“He’s sending a message to China and to India that Putin is on the verge of having extreme sanctions put on any country that buys Russian oil and gas,” he added. And Putin, said Wilkie, “cannot survive his war.”
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