Retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Blaine Holt Thursday on Newsmax called for further accountability for the money that is being spent in Ukraine after Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s announcement of a $1 billion aid package.
“We get a package in just about every other week now, and there’s no strategy behind any of it,” Holt, a former deputy military representative to NATO, said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.” “We heard that Secretary Blinken was going to go take a review of the battlefield and come back with an assessment about the counteroffensive. But where is that?”
Also, he questioned what the $1 billion will achieve to support Ukraine.
“What we’re worried about is that the resources are not being effectively managed to get to some sort of conclusion in this war, because there’s nothing decisive happening on that battlefield.”
The aid package was announced during Blinken’s visit to Kyiv on Wednesday and includes more than $665 million for new military and civilian security assistance, along with millions of dollars in support for Ukraine’s air defenses and other areas.
Blinken also commented that trapped Russian funds will be used to rebuild Ukraine, and Holt said it’s premature to make that kind of comment.
“Shouldn’t we be making that intent known at a negotiating table rather than pre-negotiating?” said Holt. “We’re going to set up fences that just take us a way from the ability to even talk to each other.”
And if it’s not known how the money is being spent, “how can we have any confidence in the policy?” said Holt.
“We see now after almost a year and a half of fighting there that the policy is not working,” he noted. “We have a World War I style of warfare, with hundreds of thousands dead, and we don’t have a whole lot to show for it, but the killing just keeps going on. So we need transparency here in the U.S.”
He added that some of the billions of dollars the United States is sending to Ukraine is already allocated to rebuild the country after the war.
“Some of that is already in there,” he said. “They’ve talked to BlackRock about coming in and scooping up a lot of reconstruction contracts.”
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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