CNN Newsroom: Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) Is Interviewed About Wagner Chief Halts Mercenaries' March To Moscow

Interview

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I mean, my sense is, if you look at just Russian history, strong men only survive in Russia. And the idea that Putin had to go to a third world power essentially Lukashenko in Belarus to ask for favor to get him out of, you know, I would say, hawk with a, you know, mercenary that helped start to save his regime basically tells him that he is weak.

So he's So he's going to have to worry about the Ministry of Defense, he's going to have to worry about other oligarchs, have to worry about other people now realizing that he doesn't have the people willing to fight for him. You know, the Wagner was able to march close to 400 miles with almost nobody from the Russian military willing to stop them, which tells you that if they're not willing to stop someone like, you know, someone like the Wagner, then are they willing to stop someone else in the Ministry of Defense that maybe has a lot more following within the army or with other services? So Putin is very weak right now.

The history of Russia is if you're a weak leader, you will be taken out. So in my opinion, time is not on his side. I don't know how long that time will be, but Russia tends to repeat itself when it comes to its history, and Putin is not going to be an exception to that.

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Well, Prigozhin is a mercenary and he acted like a mercenary and he got a better deal. So he took the deal. And he, you know, left his own men to basically hang in the wind. I don't know what's going to happen in Belarus. I would avoid very tall buildings if I was him, just from what I've read in the past. But at the same time, what we know for two things. Number one, Putin is a lot weaker than he has been in the past.

Number two, Ukraine is a really good example of what happens when you actually have a country that is unified by an idea. They were invaded and they stood together and fought. Russia basically had an insurrection. Nobody fought for Putin, which tells you which is the weaker country right now, and which is where on what side the United States should be on.

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Well, I think the Ukrainians should take every opportunity they can, obviously, to press their sovereignty and actually push forward and try to get as much territory gains back. But I think what it actually tells us as Americans is that we should not stop supporting Ukraine. The Russian plan has always been for us to stop us, as I say, United States and the West to stop supporting Ukraine eventually just wait us out.

They think that if they weigh us out eventually Ukraine will stop receiving the money, and then they could overwhelm Ukraine. Now, we know that Russia is actually internally weak. And the last thing we should do is end up not supporting Ukraine in its fight for freedom and to gain back its land. And so let's take a real lesson from this. Russia is the weak country in this situation. Russia and its autocratic allies are the weak institution of this world.

And we, as freedom fighting and freedom loving countries, should actually all join together and keep pushing forward to make sure that Ukraine stays free and can gain back its territorial land.

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I certainly and I've said this before, if you plan for a long war against Russia, you will get a long war against Russia. We need to give Ukraine the capability it needs to be able to both defend itself and go on the offense and be able to gain back the territory that it is recognized by the international community. And the idea that somehow we're going to create an escalation scenario with Russia, I think, is a ridiculous situation.

I think Biden has finally started moving in the right direction, especially approving the movement of F-16s. But I think long range capabilities, especially with ATACMS, for example, would be a very great asset to Russia to be able really to, I would say, you know, really take this battle to deeper parts of the former territories of Ukraine and push Russia back into their own homeland and hopefully end this war sooner.

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I think that's an excuse for us not to keep engaging in Ukraine. Can you really get someone worse that, you know, use sand missiles to take down an airliner over Ukraine, killing more than 200 innocent civilians, who, even before this, was killing or trying to assassinate, you know, people in United Kingdom who, you know, violated international norms by invading Georgia, by invading Crimea, invading Ukraine, causing the biggest land war in Eastern Europe.

No. The way that you contain Russia is by making sure Russia knows that they will always be met with equal resistance and that they have to actually abide by the international order, or else they will always felt -- met with resistance. So this wishing away that Putin may be the best thing that we have right now is extremely naive and somewhat, I feel like, meets their Republican political parameters, which is somewhat very pro Putin.

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Thank you. Have a good one.

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