Zelensky must accept ‘Crimea is gone’ – senior Trump campaign advisor

Kiev must embrace a “realistic vision for peace” to end the conflict with Russia, a senior member of the US president-elect’s campaign has said.

The second administration of US President-elect Donald Trump will focus on achieving peace in Ukraine rather than enabling it to take back all the territory it has lost to Russia, Bryan Lanza, a senior campaign advisor to the US president-elect, has said.

Lanza, a veteran Republican party strategist who has worked on campaigns with Trump since 2016, made the remarks to the BBC on Saturday. While he expressed respect for the Ukrainian people, Lanza said the US priority would be to achieve “peace and to stop the killing.”

The strategist dismissed as unrealistic Kiev’s proclaimed goal of expelling Russian forces from all the territory it claims. Lanza specifically mentioned the Crimean peninsula, which broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup and joined Russia via a referendum. He did not say anything about four other formerly Ukrainian territories incorporated into the country in 2022.

“When [Vladimir] 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.”

The US will not fight on Ukraine’s behalf to get the those areas back from Russia, Lanza stressed. “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 said.

Instead, the Ukrainian leadership should come up with a “realistic vision for peace” ahead of potential negotiations. Zelensky’s insistence that “we can only have peace if we have Crimea” just shows he is “not serious,” Lanza said.

“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 honest conversation,” he added.

Trump repeatedly promised to end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours during his election campaign. However, he has provided little detail on how he intends to do so. Meanwhile, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance has suggested that the conflict could be frozen along the current front line, with Kiev forced to abandon its claims over the territories held by Russia, as well as its aspiration to join NATO.

Lanza’s statements on the Ukraine issue do not reflect Trump’s position, Reuters reported on Saturday evening.

“Brian was hired to work on the campaign,” the agency quoted a Trump campaign representative as saying. “He does not work for the president [now] and does not speak for him.”