Donald Trump may call for a 800-mile demilitarized zone between Russia and Ukraine as part of a plan to end the war the early.
The proposal, which has been outlined by three Trump staffers, would involve the zone being policed by British and European troops.
It would mean that Russia would keep its territorial gains made in Ukraine with the current border frozen in place. Kyiv would also have to assure that it would not join NATO for 20 years.
Under the plans the US would arm Ukraine in return for preventing Russia from restarting the war. However, responsibility for manning and financing the buffer zone would fall solely on Ukraine’s European allies.
It comes as Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky warned that any attempt to end the war by appeasing Russia would be ‘suicide’ for Europe.
‘We can do training and other support but the barrel of the gun is going to be European,’ a member of Trump’s team told the Wall Street Journal.
‘We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it.’
Although Trump hasn’t outlined how he would get both sides to the negotiating table, his advisers have reportedly voiced different plans for how to solve the conflict.
Top Russian security official Sergei Shoigu said on Thursday that the situation in the combat zone in Ukraine is not in Kyiv’s favour and that the West should accept this and negotiate an end to the conflict, the Interfax news agency reported.
‘Now, when the situation in the theatre of military operations is not in the favour of the Kyiv regime, the West is faced with a choice – to continue financing it and destroying the Ukrainian population or to recognise the current realities and start negotiating,’ Shoigu was cited as telling a meeting of secretaries of Commonwealth of Independent States nations’ security councils in Moscow.
Trump has famously said that the Russia-Ukraine war would never have started had he been president and claimed he could bring the conflict to an abrupt halt – without ever revealing his plans for doing so.
