Trump’s adviser says the focus should be on peace and recovery of Ukrainian territory

A top adviser to president-elect Donald Trump says the incoming administration will focus on achieving peace in the war in Ukraine rather than conquering territory.

Bryan Lanza, a Republican strategist, told the BBC that the Trump administration would ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his version of a “realistic vision of peace”.

“And when President Zelensky came to the table and said, we can have peace only if we have Crimea, he shows us that he is not serious,” he said.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Eight years later, it invaded Ukraine in full and occupied the eastern part of the country.

Trump has already spoken to Zelensky since winning the US election – the pair held a phone call on Wednesday with billionaire Elon Musk also taking part.

“It was a short conversation with Musk, but it was a pretty long conversation with Trump, it lasted about half an hour,” a source in the Ukrainian presidential office told the BBC.

“It wasn’t really a conversation about important things, but overall it was warm and pleasant.”

Trump has always said that his priority is to end the war and stop the withdrawal of US resources.

His Democratic opponents have accused him of cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and say his approach to war is tantamount to giving up on Ukraine and will endanger all of Europe.

Last month, Zelensky presented a “victory plan” to the Ukrainian parliament that included a refusing to trade territories with the Ukrainian monarchy.

During his election campaign, Trump said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in a day”, but did not give details. A paper written by two of his national security officials in May said the US should continue providing weapons, but make the support conditional on Kyiv entering peace talks with Russia.

Ukraine should not give up its hope of getting all of its territory from Russia’s takeover, the paper said, but should negotiate looking at the current front lines.

Mr Lanza did not mention areas in eastern Ukraine, but said that returning Crimea to Russia was not realistic and “not the goal of the United States”.

“When Zelensky said that we will stop this war, there will be peace only when Crimea is back, we have news from President Zelensky: Crimea is gone,” he told the BBC World Service’s Weekend program.

“And if that’s your goal to take Crimea back and have the American military fight to take Crimea back, you’re on your own.”

The priority for the US was “peace and stop killing”, he said.

“What we are going to say to Ukraine is, you know what you see? What you see as a realistic vision of peace. It’s not a vision of victory, but a vision of peace. And let’s start having an honest conversation,” he said.

Earlier this week, Putin congratulated Trump on his election victory and said that Trump’s claim that he could help end the war in Ukraine “deserves at least some attention”.

Mr. Lanza also criticized the support the Biden-Harris administration and European countries have given Ukraine since it invaded Russia in February 2022.

“The clear truth is that the European country and President Biden did not give Ukraine the strength and arms to win this war in the beginning and they failed to remove the barriers for Ukraine to win,” he said.

Earlier this year, the US House of Representatives approved it a $61bn (£49bn) military aid package for Ukraine to help fight the Russian invasion.

The US has been the biggest supplier of arms to Ukraine – between February 2022 and the end of June 2024, it delivered or made weapons and equipment worth $55.5bn (£41.5bn), according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research firm. organization.