Jim Gilmore, former Governor of Virginia and U.S. Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe during the first Trump administration, has a particular viewpoint on Ukraine.
A native of Virginia and graduate of the University of Virginia, Gilmore served as a U.S. Army counterintelligence agent before entering politics as a prosecutor, Attorney General, and eventually Governor. Today, he sees the war in Ukraine as a flashpoint with global consequences.
Gilmore sees the 30-day pause in attacks between Russia and Ukraine on energy and structural infrastructure as valuable. “That is not a general 30-day ceasefire, of course,” he says. “But it is a start.”
He is cautiously optimistic, but says that while diplomacy is welcome, it must not come at the cost of Ukraine’s sovereignty. “We have to be cautious to not allow the desire for peace to become [willingness to] surrender,” he warns. “Ultimately, it's up to Ukraine to decide what is in their best interests.”
Gilmore believes President Trump deserves credit for opening diplomatic channels. “If you can do anything through diplomacy, I think that's a plus,” he says. “But negotiating with Vladimir Putin, you have to have your eyes wide open. You have to know exactly who you're dealing with, and this is a dictator and war criminal.”
Gilmore emphasizes that any pause in attacks must be verifiable, citing Reagan’s maxim: “trust but verify,” he says, adding, “Putin is continuing to hold his cards to try to achieve his long-term goals,” he says, adding this is “not only not in Europe's interests, it's not in America's interests.”
He credits Trump for pressing Europe to take more responsibility for its defense. “Trump is right about this,” Gilmore says. “There's just no reason whatsoever why the American taxpayer should allow the Europeans to be supine and weak in their military policy.”
As a former ambassador to the OSCE, Gilmore keeps an eye on how Europe responds to Ukraine’s need for more support in the face of the U.S. policy shift. He points to Germany’s decision to dramatically increase its defense budget as a sign of shift. “If Germany is in fact committed, you know that the United Kingdom is, you know France is,” he says. “So it could be that there will be support for Ukraine almost no matter what America does.”
Gilmore sees a disturbing continuity between Soviet imperialism and today’s Russian aggression. “It became a dictatorship–It became an aggressive country again,” he says of Russia under Putin. “Even the Soviets understood the idea of a balanced peace,” he says, adding, “this guy doesn't.”
He says Putin is not rebuilding a communist empire but a czarist-style empire. “He wants to reassemble the Russian Empire … that would threaten and intimidate East Europe and ultimately all of Europe.”
The annexation of Crimea in 2014, according to Gilmore, was the true start of the war. “Ukraine understood very well what Russia's really all about,” he says, noting that during a visit to Ukraine in 2021, he saw a country determined to survive. “They made it perfectly clear that they intended to survive as a country and survive as human beings and not allow themselves to be murdered by the Russian dictatorship.”
The expansion of NATO with Finland and Sweden, in Gilmore’s view, is a major blow to Putin–“one of the greatest developments in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall,” he says. “The principal impediment to [Putin’s ambitions] is NATO.”
Gilmore cautions against any agreement that legitimizes Russia’s territorial conquests. “Putin gets to keep his conquest in the East and any line of ceasefire would be the margin of his conquest,” he says. “The Western position ought to be that they have to withdraw from Ukraine’s recognized borders … Otherwise, you're just postponing the inevitable issue of conquest.”
Asked whether the situation resembles the Korean armistice, Gilmore says it could. But he insists Russia must not be given legitimacy. “They need the United States to agree that their conquest succeeded,” he says. “That is something we should never afford them.”
The stakes are high. “If Putin is able to succeed … I believe we will be on the road to World War Three,” Gilmore says. “Because at that point, the Russians and the Chinese, based upon American weakness, will overreach.”
Gilmore recounts his time in Kyiv and Mariupol. “People were out and about. They were going to restaurants. They were behaving like normal Western people,” he says. “The municipal people [in Mariupol] were very proud of their future and their opportunity in a free Ukraine … as we know now, Mariupol was more or less destroyed.”
The West stands at a crossroads, according to Gilmore. “If we do this right, that world war will never occur, and the 21st century will be a century of freedom and leadership and opportunity for people. But that is the moment we face right now.”
