He described Putin as a tyrant and said it will be extremely difficult to deal with him.
“I give President Trump credit for saying that he wants to end this. He wants to end the bloodshed. He doesn’t like the suffering that’s out there. I just think this is going to be an enormous task for anybody to negotiate with Putin,” Rounds said.
He also brought up the Budapest Memorandum, which was supposed to guarantee Ukraine's security in exchange for giving up its nuclear warheads to Russia for disposal.
“It’s not the United States that’s causing the problems there in Ukraine right now,” Rounds continued. “It is Russia going back on their written commitment to help protect the lines that were drawn in 1994. So once again, it is Putin going back on his country’s word of honor. I don’t think you can trust a guy that doesn’t honor their word of honor.”
On Nov. 27, Trump named retired Gen. Keith Kellogg as the U.S. special envoy on the Russia-Ukraine war.