Washington Post: Trump's secret plan to end Ukraine-Russia war

Former President Donald Trump has said privately that he could end Russia's war in Ukraine by pressuring Ukraine to give up some territories. Washington Post.

Some foreign policy experts said Trump's idea would reward Russian President Vladimir Putin and pardon forced violation of internationally recognised borders.

Trump's proposal consists of delaying Ukraine to hand over the Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia, according to people who discussed it with Trump or his advisers and spoke on condition of anonymity because those conversations were confidential.

This approach, which was not reported earlier, would dramatically change President Biden's policy, which has highlighted limiting Russian aggression and providing military aid to Ukraine.

While seeking a return to power, the alleged republican candidate has often boasted that he could negotiate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours if elected, even before taking office. But he has repeatedly refused to specify publicly how he would quickly solve a war that has sparked more than two years and killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians.

Trump-related foreign policy experts have stressed addressing threats to US interests from China and seeking ways to restore Russia's growing dependence on China for military, industrial and economic assistance. They have also embraced restrictions on NATO enlargement.

In private, Trump has said he thinks Russia and Ukraine “wanted to save their faces, want a way out” and that people in parts of Ukraine would be okay with being part of Russia, according to a person who has discussed the issue. live with Trump.

Accepting Russian control over parts of Ukraine would expand Putin's dictatorship following what has been the biggest land war in Europe since World War II. Some of Trump's supporters have tried to convince him against such a result.

I spent 100 percent of my time talking to Trump about Ukraine”, said Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a former Trump critic turned ally. He must pay a price. He cannot win at the end of this”, Graham added, talking about Putin.

Russia has earlier stated that it was annexing Ukrainian land beyond the region of Donbas and Crimea, and Ukraine's President Voldymyr Zelensky has said he would not accept surrender of any territory. The exchange of territory for a ceasefire would put Ukraine in a worse position without guarantee that Russia would not re-arm and resume hostilities, as it has done in the past, said Emma Ashford, a senior member at the Stimson Centre, a non-party institute.

This is a terrible deal”, she told Trump's proposal.

Trump's campaign refused to address questions about this article directly.

Any speculation about President Trump's plan comes from unidentified and uninformed sources, who have no idea what is happening or what will happen”, campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a statement.

President Trump is the only one who talks about stopping the” murder.

Beden said in his speech about the Union's situation that Putin is “on the march, occupying Ukraine and sowing chaos across Europe and beyond”, and that Ukraine is trying to defend itself.

The president has outlined a long-term support plan for Ukraine that would build its military skills this year so that it will be in a better place to go to offensive next year. But US aid is already in danger after House of Representatives Chairman Mike Johnson ( R-La.) faces a revolt by hardline republics who are digging against any further financing and seeking to bring it down.

Outside of office, Trump has exerted pressure on the republics of Congress to resist additional US support for Ukraine's war efforts and a return to the White House would significantly expand its influence on the debate. Given the political dynamic in the US, European allies have launched the military industry at a point where they hope to replace a significant part of the current US aid to Kiev.

But analysts said that, in reality, Ukraine's capacity to continue the war would be weakened if Trump managed to block further US aid.

In many ways, Trump's plan is in line with his approach as president. His preference for noisy summits on policy details, confidence in his negotiating skills, and impatience with conventional diplomatic protocols were all identifying the way he approaches foreign affairs in his first term.

In his eight years as a holder of GOP standards, Trump has led a severe change in the party's dominant orientation to become more sceptical of foreign interventions, such as military aid to Ukraine.

Trump has repeatedly complimented Putin, expressed admiration for his dictatorial rule and has done everything to avoid his criticism, recently to die in prison of political opponent Alexei Navajo. He has not called for the release of Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal journalist held in Russia for a year without c expense or a trial.

Trump has refused to accept Russia's intervention in the 2016 elections and has falsely blamed Ukraine for trying to help Democrat rival Hillary Clinton a slander spread by Russian spying services. His 2019 attempt to stop helping Ukraine if Zelensky did not announce an investigation into Beden led to Trump's first dismissal.

In a call with Zelensky that year that Trump said it was “effect”, the US president pressured Zelenski to investigate Biden and the discredited theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, sought to intervene in the 2016 elections. The GOP-controlled Senate later cleared Trump.

The ex-President Trump's inexplicable and admirable relationship with Putin, along with his unprecedented hostility to NATO, cannot give Europe or Ukraine any confidence in his relationship with Russia”, said Tom Donillo, the national security adviser to President Barack Obama.

The “Trump companies that encourage Russia to do whatever it wants with our European allies are among the most disturbing and dangerous statements made by a key party candidate for president. His position represents a clear and present danger to the security of the United States and Europe.

Graham said he has warned against giving the desired land to Russia and wants Trump to embrace a path forward towards Ukraine to join NATO.

The way you end this war for me is to make sure Ukraine enters NATO and the EU,”, he said.

He doesn't talk much about it. I don't know if he's been thinking about this”.

In his public promises to end the war, Trump has eyed specifics about how he would negotiate with Putin and Zelensky. I'm going to say some things to each of them that I wouldn't tell the rest of the world, and that's why I can't tell you more than that,” Trump said in an interview in March with former assistant Sebastian Gorka. .

His public silence over his negotiating approach has left room for others to fill gaps. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has commissioned European allies with his autocratic and pro-Russian tendencies, met with Trum last month and later claimed Trump told him he would force the war to end because “ai would not give a quarter of” to help Ukraine.

Orban's statement was false, but the former president did not want to object publicly after having had fun all night in his Mar-a-Lago club and admied his toughness and anti-immigration positions, according to a person close to Trump, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

During the meeting, Orban long spoke of Soviet history, Russia's desire for Ukrainian territory and the military challenges Ukraine faces, the man said. Trump listened, but was not committed, the person said. An Orban spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump's plan for Ukraine circulated in Washington last November at a meeting at the Heritage Foundation between centre-right foreign policy figures and a visitor delegation from the European Council for Foreign Relations.

Former Minister of Trump at the White House Michael Anton described the expected plans of the Trump peace plan as releasing territory from Ukraine to Crimea and Donbas, limiting NATO enlargement and luring Putin to release his growing support from China, according to many people present at the meeting, who as others. spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private discussion.

Russia's departure from China would evidently include easing sanctions, as the Kremlin has turned towards Beijing in an effort to compensate for broad-based Western sanctions in its energy, defence and finance sectors, said Jeremy Shapiro, head of the European Council office in Washington.

Shapiro refused to comment on the specifics of the conversation, citing the basic rules of the November event that prevented the attribution of everything said, but he said Trump's peace plan for Ukraine did not seem to be detailed.

The Trump's “people feel like one of the major sins of the war of Ukraine and Russia's policy, in general, is to push Russia towards China and make it even more dependent on China,” he said. “The basic point of Trump with all things is to gather men in a room together to discuss”, without necessarily having detailed plans, Shapiro said.

Russian experts suspected Trump's peace efforts could succeed d. Fiona Hill, a senior associate at the Brookings Institute who was the chief adviser to Trump for Russia and has since appeared as a prominent critic, said this reminded her of it in 2017 when unconscious foreigners and business leaders approached Trump with different peace plans and he thought he could sit down with Russia and Ukraine and plead for the power of his personal career.

Trump's “team is thinking a lot about it in the barracks, that this is just a Ukraine-Russia-” issue, Hill said. “They think of it as a territorial dispute, and not as a dispute over the entire future of European security and the world order in progress. ”

Even attracting the ceasefire line may not be as direct. The Kremlin in September 2022 said it was annexing four southern and eastern provinces of Ukraine, including the Donbas region, but spreading far beyond it. Since Kiev still controls most of the territory, any efforts to resolve the fight with territorial concessions are likely to include broad deals unless both sides simply agree to freeze the front lines that are in place at the moment of a deal.

Ukraine and European allies would probably resist Trump's efforts to reach an agreement with Moscow, Hill said. She said Europeans have started their military industry at a point where they hope to replace a significant part of the current US aid to Kiev. She added that the US has limited power for a unilateral agreement, because meaningful relief of sanctions would be based on European co-operation.

No amount of leverage having the United States is likely to force Ukrainian leadership into policies that would constitute domestic political suicide”, said Michael Koufman, a Russian-Ukraine war analyst in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a non-party research centre. “And no amount of lever that the United States has can force Ukraine to remove territory or engage in these types of concessions. This is a situation where if you're willing to give a hand, the other side will soon want the rest of your arm”.