Trump campaign adviser says Ukraine focus must be peace, not territory

An ally of President-elect Donald Trump says the incoming administration will focus on achieving peace in Ukraine rather than enabling the country to gain back territory occupied by Russia.

Bryan Lanza, a strategist who worked on Trump’s recent presidential campaign, told the BBC the incoming administration would ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his version of a “realistic vision for peace”.

“And if President Zelensky comes to the table and says, well we can only have peace if we have Crimea, he shows to us that he’s not serious,” he said. “Crimea is gone.”

A spokesperson for Trump distanced the incoming president from the remarks, saying Mr Lanza “does not speak for him”.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Eight years later, it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has occupied territory in the country’s east.

The president-elect has consistently said his priority is to end the war and stem what he characterises as a drain on US resources, in the form of military aid to Ukraine.

But he has yet to divulge how he intends to do so – and will likely be hearing competing visions for Ukraine’s future from his various advisers.

Mr Lanza, a Trump political adviser during his 2016 and 2024 campaigns, did not mention areas of eastern Ukraine, but he said regaining Crimea from Russia was unrealistic and “not the goal of the United States”.

“When Zelensky says we will only stop this fighting, there will only be peace once Crimea is returned, we’ve got news for President Zelensky: Crimea is gone,” he told the BBC World Service’s Weekend programme.

“And if that is your priority of getting Crimea back and having American soldiers fight to get Crimea back, you’re on your own.”

The US has never deployed American soldiers to fight in Ukraine, nor has Kyiv requested American troops fight on its behalf. Ukraine has only requested American military aid to arm its own soldiers.

Mr Lanza said he had tremendous respect for the Ukrainian people, whose “hearts are made of lions”. But he said the US priority was “peace and to stop the killing”.

“What we’re going to say to Ukraine is, you know what 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,” he said.

In response, Zelensky’s adviser Dmytro Lytvyn characterised Mr Lanza’s remarks as placing the pressure for peace on Ukraine when it was “Putin who wants more war”.

“Putin loses most of his people in assaults at the front. What does this indicate? It is obvious that he wants to fight on,” he said.

“Ukraine has been offering peace since 2022 – there are quite realistic proposals. And it is Russia that must be made to hear that peace is needed and that peace must be reliable, so that there is simply no repetition of Russian strikes.”

A spokesperson for Trump’s transition team – which prepares the incoming administration for office – said Mr Lanza was “a contractor for the campaign”, but “does not work for President Trump and does not speak for him”.

Trump is expected to handle peace talks with a close circle of aides once in office.

An unnamed National Security Council aide who previously served under Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday: “Anyone – no matter how senior in Trump’s circle – who claims to have a different view or more detailed window into his plans on Ukraine simply doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.”

They said that the former president “makes his own calls on national security issues” and had done so “many times in the moment”.

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

A source in Ukraine’s presidential office told the BBC that the “good lengthy conversation” between Zelensky and Trump lasted “about half an hour”.

“It was not really a conversation to talk about very substantial things, but overall it was very warm and pleasant.”

Trump’s Democratic opponents have accused him of cosying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and say his approach to the war amounts to surrender for Ukraine that will endanger all of Europe.

Last month, Zelensky presented a “victory plan” to the Ukrainian parliament that included a refusal to cede Ukraine’s territories and sovereignty.

During his election campaign, Trump repeatedly said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in a day”, but never gave further details.

A paper written by two of his former national security chiefs in May said the US should continue supplying weapons, but make the support conditional on Kyiv entering peace talks with Russia.

Ukraine should not give up its hopes of getting all of its territory back from Russian occupation, the paper said, but it should negotiate based on current front lines.

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

Mr Lanza also criticised the support the Biden-Harris administration and European countries have given to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

“The reality on the ground is [that] the European nation states and President Biden did not give Ukraine the ability and the arms to win this war at the very beginning and failed to lift the restrictions for Ukraine to win,” he said.

Earlier this year, the US House of Representatives approved a $61bn (£49bn) package in military aid for Ukraine to help combat Russia’s invasion.

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

Clarification: This article has been amended to reflect that Bryan Lanza stopped working as an adviser to the Trump campaign after the election.