Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said Europeans “should be threatening things to” Russian President Vladimir Putin that causes them discomfort in an interview that aired Sunday.
“The Ukrainians clearly have a seat at the table, and then the United States will be the intermediary as we try to establish a peace deal. The Europeans need to demand a seat at the table by being uncomfortably aggressive, which is something they haven’t done,” Crenshaw told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation,” discussing the war in Ukraine.
“You should be threatening things to Putin that actually make you uncomfortable because that’s how — that’s the only language Putin speaks, is power,” the Texas Republican added.
Last Wednesday, President Trump said he expects to meet face-to-face with Putin multiple times, with the president implying that they will probably first meet in Saudi Arabia.
“We ultimately expect to meet,” Trump said in the Oval Office. “In fact, we expect that he’ll come here, and I’ll go there, and we’re going to meet also, probably in Saudi Arabia. The first time we’ll meet in Saudi Arabia.”
In his CBS appearance, Crenshaw said European leaders “need to be talking about where” they are “going to be putting actual troops on the ground.”
“Stop following our lead and actually take the lead. Let us be actually holding you back. That would be an ideal situation and vastly change the power dynamic when dealing with Putin,” he added.
The foreign minister of Poland, Radosław Sikorski, has said that a united European army “will not happen.”
“If you understand by … the unification of national armies, it will not happen,” Sikorski said. “But I have been an advocate for Europe, for the European Union, to develop its own defense capabilities.”
