Once he takes office, President-elect Donald Trump will move to quickly end Russian President Vladimir Putin's war, according to Kurt Volker, former special envoy to Ukraine.
Volker, who handled negotiations between Ukraine and Russia from 2017 to 2019 during Trump's first term, told the Kyiv Independent that Trump will "make a phone call to Putin as quickly as possible" and tell the Russian leader "he needs to stop the war."
Given Trump's frequent criticism of Washington's financial support of Kyiv, it is uncertain what his return to the White House means for the future of continued U.S. aid to the embattled nation.
Putin does not want a deal but instead wants to annex all of Ukraine, Volker said, and will be "a cunning and wily opponent" for the incoming Republican president.
To stop the conflict, Trump will need to convince Putin "that it's going to hurt him, that it's going to cost him too much if he pursues the war and that's going to require showing much more strength."
One way to do that, the former ambassador said, is to ramp up domestic oil and gas production and flood global markets with cheap energy in an effort to negatively impact the Russian economy. He also floated the idea of a lend-lease program in which Ukraine borrows money to purchase U.S.-made weapons.
"I don't think Trump wants to spend American taxpayers' money on Ukraine, but to allow Ukraine to borrow what it needs to defend itself," Volker said. "If you make it, say, $500 billion, a huge number, that should be enough to tell Putin he can't outspend this, he can't win this and that could also point the way towards a settlement."
Putin's war against Ukraine will be almost three years old when Trump steps back into the Oval Office on Jan. 20, and his frequent claims of ending the war within "24 hours" have led to speculation about how, exactly, he will deal with Moscow.
Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Chatham House think tank, told Newsweek that "Trump could mean anything for Ukraine," specifically that he could sell it "for the sake of great power politics" or double down "on inflicting damage to Russia."
"But given his fascination with Putin, the risk is that the Kremlin can play the vanity card to its advantage," she said. "If Trump is convinced Ukraine is a problem to his ambition, it will be abandoned and will be presented as a European, not an American, problem."
Citing three anonymous sources close to Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported that one idea being considered to end the war involves delaying Ukraine's NATO membership by at least 20 years in exchange for continuing to supply munitions and creating an 800-mile demilitarized zone between Russia and Ukraine.