Ukrainian officials believe Vladimir Putin is "humiliating" U.S. President Donald Trump by continuing Russia's bombing campaign and refusing to sign the U.S.-brokered peace deal, according to CNN's Jim Sciutto.
Sciutto appeard alongside Maj. Gen. James "Spider" Marks on Friday's News Central to discuss the continued attacks that killed at least eight people over night.
Anchor John Berman asked, "What evidence have we seen that the Trump administration has applied any sticks to Russia, in the whole 'carrot-and-stick' metaphor?"
"We haven't seen the evidence, frankly," Sciutto began. "And I spoke to a Ukrainian member of parliament yesterday — the chair of the equivalent of their foreign affairs committee — and he said, in his words, that Putin is humiliating Trump, because Trump, of course, has been pushing the ceasefire for more than a month now, and Vladimir Putin — Russia has not signed off on it. And, in fact, by their actions, these strikes that we've been seeing on an almost daily basis, those are direct challenges to Trump's ambition there."
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Sciutto said the question remains whether Trump will back up his "Vladimir, STOP!" social media post "with genuine action" in the form of economic pressure.
Marks predicted that "the warfare we're seeing right now is going to be the long-term engagement, which is the Russian way of war, which is the use of incredible amounts of artillery, dumb bombings, incredible destruction on the receiving end of all of that and the application of manpower at tremendous cost."
Marks continued, "Look, the Russians have lost close to a million men. I mean, just think about that for a second. Marinate in that number. And Stalin made the comment 50 years ago, 70 years ago...'The loss of one individual is a tragedy. The loss of a million is simply a statistic.' And that's where we are."
Watch the clip below via CNN or click the link.