Kiev must embrace a “realistic vision for peace” to end the conflict with Russia, a senior member of the US president-elect’s team has said
The second Trump administration 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 advisor to the US president-elect, has said.
Lanza, a veteran Republican party strategist who has worked with Donald Trump since his 2016 campaign, 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…