A senior adviser to Donald Trump said that the incoming US administration’s priority for Ukraine will be about achieving peace rather than it regaining territory captured by Russia in the almost three years of the war.
In an interview with the BBC, broadcast on Saturday, Bryan Lanza, who has been a political adviser to Trump since his 2016 presidential campaign, began to elaborate on the strong signals the now president-elect had been sending to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the campaign trail.
Lanza said: “When Zelenskyy says we will only stop this fighting, there will only be peace, once Crimea is returned, we’ve got news for President Zelenskyy: Crimea is gone.”
The comments came as Russia advances across the eastern Ukrainian battlefield at the quickest rate since its February 2022 invasion of its neighbor, while also attacking cities including the capital, Kiev, with munitions carried by drones. In 2022, Russia built on the assault it made on the south-eastern Ukrainian Crimean peninsula that juts into the Black Sea – which it launched in 2014 – and now holds control there.
Lanza added: “And if that is your priority, of getting Crimea back and having American soldiers fight to get Crimea back, you’re on your own.”
He went on to say that the US’s priority in Ukraine was to achieve “peace and to stop the killing”.
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Zelenskyy came to the United Nations general assembly gathering in New York and to the White House in September touting what seemed like a last-ditch “victory plan” that involved winning permission to use long-range US weapons to fire deep into Russia. But he was rebuffed, with the US and its Nato allies wary, as they have been since 2022, of the conflict escalating into a war between Russia and the west.
Lanza added: “What we’re going to say to Ukraine is, you know, what do you see? What do you see as a realistic vision for peace? It’s not a vision for winning, but it’s a vision for peace. And let’s start having the honest conversation.”
There are fears that Trump’s boasts that he would very quickly end the war in Ukraine means no more than essentially forcing Ukraine to give up by withdrawing support, handing the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, victory and further emboldening him.
Following Trump’s latest election victory, Zelenskyy congratulated him, saying: “I recall our great meeting with President Trump back in September, when we discussed in detail the Ukraine-US strategic partnership, the victory plan, and ways to put an end to Russian aggression against Ukraine.”
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On Wednesday, Axios reported that Trump and Zelenskyy had a call with each other. The call, which Zelenskyy described as “excellent”, also featured a surprise appearance from staunch Trump ally Elon Musk, who initially provided Starlink satellites to Ukraine for free in 2022. In 2023, Musk’s SpaceX prevented the satellite from controlling Ukraine’s surveillance drones, triggering outrage among Ukrainian officials.
On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly attacked Zelenskyy, accusing him of making “nasty aspersions toward your favorite president, me”. Trump added: “We continue to give billions of dollars to a man who refuses to make a deal: Zelenskyy.’”
In September, Zelenskyy gave an interview to the New Yorker in which he cast doubt on Trump’s ability to end the war while describing JD Vance as “too radical”.
A few weeks later, Trump called Zelenskyy “one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever met”, telling a conservative podcast: “Every time he comes in, we give him $100bn. Who else got that kind of money in history? There’s never been. And that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help him, because I feel very badly for those people. But he should never have let that war start. That war is a loser.”
Trump was impeached in 2019 during his first term for essentially trying to extort Zelenskyy over weapons supplies. He was acquitted by the US Senate.