Trump’s adviser says Ukraine’s focus should be peace, not territorial recovery

President-elect Donald Trump’s top adviser says the incoming administration will focus on finding peace in Ukraine rather than the country’s ability to regain territory controlled by Russia.

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. “Crimea is gone.”

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

The president-elect has consistently said his top priority is ending the war and ending what he describes as a waste of US military aid to Ukraine.

Mr Lanza, who has been a political adviser to the former president since Trump launched his 2016 campaign, did not comment on eastern Ukraine, but said 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 US has never sent US troops to fight in Ukraine, and Kyiv has never asked US troops to fight for it. Ukraine has only asked for US military assistance to arm its forces.

Mr. Lanza said he has a lot of respect for the Ukrainian people, describing them as having the hearts of lions. But he said the priority for the US is “peace and stopping the killing”.

“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.

Trump spoke to Zelensky after his election victory, with billionaire Elon Musk also taking part in the call.

A source in the office of the Ukrainian president told the BBC that the “nice long conversation” between Zelensky and Trump lasted “about half an hour”.

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

Trump’s Democratic opponents have accused him of meeting with 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 give up territories and sovereignty of Ukraine.

During his election campaign, Trump said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in a day”, but did not provide any further 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.

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.