As Ramesh has observed, “Ron DeSantis’s remarks about Russia’s grinding war in Ukraine have now sustained more scrutiny than some treaties.” Of course, as DeSantis inches closer to an open presidential campaign, gnomic pronouncements will need to give way to clear statements. Piers Morgan has been rolling out quotes of an extended interview he did with DeSantis. While I would question the choice to talk to a notoriously contemptible foreign journalist, the interview itself (assuming Morgan is accurately quoting it; it has yet to air) reveals DeSantis laying out his views in much more detail. That includes his approach to Ukraine.
DeSantis’s use of the phrase “territorial dispute” to describe Russia’s war on Ukraine was a poor choice, and has attracted the lion’s share of criticism. I noted at the time that this was obvious pandering to Tucker Carlson and his audience, but also that there was nonetheless a potentially defensible (if contested) reading of what DeSantis meant: that the war no longer presents an existential threat to Ukraine’s survival as a sovereign state, and has reached the stage at which the two sides could, if willing, make a peace that might require Ukraine to abandon some of the Donbas region in exchange for a stable settlement with Russia. That would be morally unsatisfying, but realistic.
From his reported response to Morgan, it appears that this is what DeSantis meant, and that he recognizes that it was a poor choice of words (emphases added):
When I asked him specifically if he regretted using the phrase “territorial dispute,” DeSantis replied, “Well, I think it’s been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong. . . .
“What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting and that’s what I was referring to and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it, but I think the larger point is, okay, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO. That’s a good thing. I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified (in invading) – that’s nonsense . . . I think [the Ukrainians] have the right to that territory. . . . If I could snap my fingers, I’d give it back to Ukraine 100% . . .
“I think those regions in the (eastern) border, and Crimea, are likely to be a stalemate for quite some time, and unfortunately a lot of people will end up dying if that’s the case. But I do not think it’s going to end with Putin being victorious. I do not think the Ukrainian Government is going to be toppled by him and I think that’s a good thing.”
DeSantis also stands by his prior assessment of Putin, and by his view that the war has degraded Putin’s power:
“I think he’s got grand ambitions,” he said, “I think he’s hostile to the United States, but I think the thing that we’ve seen is he doesn’t have the conventional capability to realize his ambitions. And so, he’s basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons. . . . The way to hit Putin is to hit him with energy, but I do think if you look back, all the defense analysts, and me in the past, we over-estimated his conventional capability. This has been a huge blunder for him. Huge cost and you know we’ll see what ends up happening with his longevity in power, but this has been a loss for them. . . . I think he is a war criminal.”