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By Joe Edwards
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South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds has dismissed calls for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be trusted to honor such an agreement.
"As much as I would like to believe we can negotiate with a tyrant, I suspect we may be deceiving ourselves," Rounds said in reference to Putin at the Halifax Security Forum on Friday.
"Do you believe that this tyrant, if you offer him a part of a free country, do you think he's gonna stop?" Rounds said.
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"I wish I could say there's an easy way out, there's not."
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The Republican's sentiments stand in contrast with those of President-Elect Trump, who has previously claimed he could end the conflict in one day.
Rounds also bemoaned the restriction placed on Kyiv in its response to Russia's full-scale invasion.
"I just feel so frustrated that we have not been able to provide them all of the equipment that they need, and all of the weapons systems that they need, in order to respond to the absolute tyranny coming from Russia," said Rounds, who did reportedly stress that his views were not those of the incoming administration.
"I wonder why we haven't done more more quickly than we have."
When contacted for comment, the Trump transition team pointed Newsweek to the following statement from Communications Director Steven Cheung: "As President Trump has said on the campaign trail, he is the only person who can bring both sides together in order to negotiate peace, and work towards ending the war and stopping the killing."
Rounds' comments came amid escalating Russian attacks on Ukraine this week.
On Thursday, Moscow carried out a hypersonic missile strike on the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro, targeting a military facility.
The strike involved the experimental Oreshnik hypersonic missile, an intermediate-range weapon reportedly adaptable for both nuclear and conventional warheads.
In a televised address, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the attack was in retaliation for Ukraine's use of U.S. and British long-range missiles, which enable strikes on targets inside Russia.
"No one in the world possesses such weapons," he said.
President Joe Biden greenlit the use of U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) for strikes in Russian territory in a marked shift in policy announced last weekend.
Kyiv had long been lobbying for such a move, which was justified by Biden as a response to the involvement of North Korean troops in the war.
"ATACMS will significantly enhance Ukraine's ability to disrupt Russian operations deep behind the front lines," Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Ukraine's former defense minister, told the Financial Times. "These missiles allow us to address high-value targets that other systems cannot."
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Update, 11/23/24, 11:37 a.m. ET: This article was updated with a response from the Trump transition team.
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