{"id":4754,"date":"2024-11-01T14:08:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T14:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/offer-putin-graceful-exit-from-ukraine-war\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T09:05:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T09:05:06","slug":"offer-putin-graceful-exit-from-ukraine-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/offer-putin-graceful-exit-from-ukraine-war\/","title":{"rendered":"Offer Putin \u201cgraceful exit\u201d from Ukraine war"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><\/figure>\n<p>President Vladimir Putin should be allowed a graceful exit from the war in Ukraine, says Rear Admiral Mike Hewitt.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Adm Hewitt, who served in the US Navy for 31-years, emphasised the need to focus not only on what victory looks like for Ukraine but also on what it might look like for Russia. \u201cThe reality is there will be no white flag raised in this conflict\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with National Security News at the Meridian Space Summit, the admiral said: \u201cWe\u2019ve unintentionally boxed Putin in a bit when we talk about regime change.\u201d He noted that discussing regime change is the last thing you want to do with an adversarial leader, especially when that leader is in a situation where he has overplayed his hand and there is a threat of using tactical nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<p><iframe title=\"Admiral Mike Hewitt: Offer Putin a \u201cgraceful exit\u201d from Ukraine war\" width=\"801\" height=\"451\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/afrix-9Vc3k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Adm Hewitt, who is the Co-Founder and CEO of IP3 (International Peace, Power, and Prosperity), an international energy and security company\u00a0stressed that discussions about peace in Ukraine can\u2019t be a binary conversation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He added: \u201cUkraine needs to be returned to their sovereignty, that is clear, and there should be no argument about Crimea. There should be no argument about the eastern border. That being said, it can\u2019t be where there\u2019s a winner and a loser.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Taking Russia\u2019s frozen assets with no plan for an internationally accepted use of those assets, according to Adm Hewitt, is not the answer. \u201cWe\u2019ll bankrupt the country\u2026 there are many other, more nuanced approaches to financing the recovery of Ukraine,\u201d he said, that the US is involved in. \u201cBut I think allow Putin what I would call a graceful exit,\u201d he said. \u201cIf we don\u2019t create that, we\u2019re not going to find an acceptable end state.\u201d Adm Hewitt said the United States should create this graceful exit.<\/p>\n<p>The White House announced on 23 October that Ukraine will receive $50 billion in loans, backed by frozen Russian assets, from the Group of Seven allies. Distribution of the money will begin by the end of year, according to American officials who said the United States is providing $20 billion of the total.<\/p>\n<p>Leaders of the wealthy democracies agreed earlier this year to engineer the loan to help Ukraine in its fight for survival after Russia\u2019s invasion. Interest earned on profits from Russia\u2019s frozen central bank assets would be used as collateral.<\/p>\n<p>President Joe Biden said in a statement: \u201cUkraine can receive the assistance it needs now, without burdening taxpayers. These loans will support the people of Ukraine as they defend and rebuild their country. And our efforts make it clear: tyrants will be responsible for the damages they cause.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ukraine must be resourced for victory <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When you talk about peace or a ceasefire, he said, it has to be done recognising what the Ukrainians say to him, \u201cwe can\u2019t fix who our neighbours are.\u201d He says the Ukrainians are more strategic about this than they are given credit for.<\/p>\n<p>What is certain, according to the admiral, is that \u201cthere is a tremendous amount of attrition right now on the battlefield. We are losing way too many young men and women, and some of the things that I\u2019ve seen on the ground are really terrible in terms of lack of care for the wounded, lack of battlefield medicine, things that we created for Afghanistan and Iraq, they have none of that on either side. So unfortunately, what we\u2019re watching is a massive attrition of young men and women in a kinetic fight that\u2019s not really advancing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>What the US needs to do, according to Adm Hewitt, is not just to resource Ukraine for the kinetic fight and to continue the war against Russia; Ukraine needs to be resourced for victory. One of the reasons, he said, that Ukraine has been successfully repelling the Russians is not because the US has given them the resources, \u201cbecause we really hadn\u2019t. We clearly have not given them the authority to win,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine is redefining warfare, according to Adm Hewitt. \u201cThey have over 700 startups in Ukraine that really came about by necessity. But even before the war, what we saw in Ukraine was a country that had Silicon Valley on steroids, with engineers and smart tech, and all they\u2019ve done is really take that tech and realign it to the purpose of defeating the Russians.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The domain of space warfare is where cyber was 15 years ago<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Adm Hewitt played a role in developing the rules of engagement, permissions, and legal policies of cyber. It involved defining what war fighters can and can\u2019t do in cyber. That is where, he says, we are in the space domain right now, looking to develop rules of engagement in space.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve got progress with the Artemis Accords being signed. We\u2019ve got lots of excitement about the domain of space, but it also will be a war-fighting environment, one that we\u2019ve already seen the Russians, the Chinese, and even the Americans flex their muscles a bit, going back even 10 or 12 years with anti-satellite weapons demonstrations and postering about space as a war fighting domain.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He says he wants the space domain to be the same as the other domains so that air warfare, subsurface warfare, land warfare, and cyber warfare are all defined by the same vernacular.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I look at the space domain, I see a very similar model. We need to really start to think about what the rules of engagement are. How are they impacted? How are they impacted by treaties such as the Hague Convention, the Geneva Convention, NATO? These are all things that we need to sit down and start to operationally discuss in the next year or two.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Russians, he said, are writing their own doctrine for space, \u201cand we need to understand what muscles they\u2019re going to flex at the UN Security Council.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>We\u2019re no longer a generation ahead of the Chinese<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"854\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/FjCM06mXwAAPGtf.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7455\" style=\"width:732px;height:auto\"  \/><\/figure>\n<p>The US, he said, used to maintain what was termed as an Offset Strategy where it always was a generation ahead of the Chinese. That is no longer the case, he said. China has caught up in almost every advanced technology out there and\u00a0\u00a0have really moved ahead of the US in many areas.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019re no longer a generation ahead of the Chinese in space, in cyber, in deep neural nets and hyper sonics and many of these different domains that we used to have the high ground in; they now have caught up to us, and their track record shows that they will operate in less than a peaceful manner with these domains.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The US needs to think about how it can use space in a conflicts<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While it is important to think of diplomacy and how nations can work harmoniously in space, Adm Hewitt believes that diplomacy is just one element of space. We need to think of the downside, he said, \u201cthe potential for using space in a military campaign.\u201d \u201cWe need to be in those conversations as well, because certainly the Russians and the Chinese are, and so what I see is a tipping point in this domain by which you\u2019d actually organise ourselves better than we ever did in cyber.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Adm Hewitt says space can do unbelievable things for mankind but \u201cwe also need to understand how we can use it potentially against our adversaries in a conflict. It is a negative side, but it\u2019s something that we have to be thinking about because our adversaries certainly are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Vladimir Putin should be allowed a graceful exit from the war in Ukraine, says Rear Admiral Mike Hewitt.\u00a0 Adm Hewitt, who served in the US Navy for 31-years, emphasised the need to focus not only on what victory looks like for Ukraine but also on what it might look like for Russia. \u201cThe reality<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4756,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-africa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4754"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4757,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4754\/revisions\/4757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/national\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}