When Donald Trump takes office as president, his focus on the war in Ukraine is to achieve peace, and then the Ukrainian president must look realistically at the future, says Bryan Lanza, who previously has been an advisor to Donald Trump.
If President (Volodymyr) Zelenskyj says that they will only stop fighting, and that it will only be peace, if they get back Crimea, well then we have news for the president: Crimea is lost, says Lanza to British BBC.
Honest talks
A spokesperson for Trump says to Reuters that Lanza does not work or speak for the incoming president, but does not deny the information itself.
Among Donald Trump's campaign promises was to put an end to Russia's war in Ukraine "within 24 hours".
It has previously been speculated that this would, among other things, mean that Kyiv would be forced to make significant concessions, such as promising not to try to join the defense alliance NATO for at least 20 years and that today's front lines would in practice be frozen, which would mean that Crimea would remain under Russian rule.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in violation of international law in 2014. The country currently occupies around 20 percent of Ukrainian territory in the south and east, according to The Kyiv Independent.
Russian-American signals
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov announced on Saturday that Washington and Moscow "are exchanging signals through secret channels.
The Foreign Ministry did not specify whether the contacts are with the current or incoming government in Washington, but Ryabkov said that Russia is willing to consider proposals as long as they "are ideas about how we should move forward on settlement issues, and do not involve how all possible aid can be pumped to Kyiv".
Moscow thus stands by its statement that areas occupied by Russian military in Ukraine will not be part of the negotiations.
