Donald Trump may call for a 800-mile demilitarised 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.
Donald Trump pulled off an astounding political comeback and regained the White House in a dominant victory in the 2024 US presidential election
President Donald Trump meets with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg in July 2017
Map shows what the proposed 800-mile buffer zone could look like
‘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.
Zelensky is adamantly against relinquishing territory to Vladimir Putin
There are fears US military aid for Ukraine will dwindle when Trump becomes president
Keir Starmer congratulated Donald Trump in their first phone call since the Republican’s election win as he tries to repair ties
Ukrainian servicemen of the 26th artillery brigade fire an AHS Krab self-propelled howitzer toward Russian positions near the front line in the Chasiv Yar area
A member of Ukraine’s special police unit Hyzhak (Predator) near the frontline city of Toretsk on October 25
Britain, France and Germany have already vowed to support Ukraine ‘for as long as it takes’ and Zelensky is adamantly against relinquishing territory to Vladimir Putin.
Yesterday, the Ukrainian leader said that making any concessions to Putin would be ‘unacceptable for Ukraine’ and ‘suicidal for Europe’.
With that in mind, it is difficult to see how such a plan could be pushed through other than by strong-arming Kyiv with threats of withholding sorely needed US military aid.
This would dramatically undermine Washington’s relations with all of Europe and call into question the legitimacy of NATO.
Some analysts and politicians have cautioned it could even embolden the likes of China to capitalise on the West’s perceived disunity and seek to expand its influence in the Pacific.
Fears that the Republican might seek to unilaterally withdraw from NATO altogether are overblown, with US Congress having passed legislation that requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate to approve such a move.
However, many analysts have warned that Trump is indeed likely to reduce US military aid to Ukraine and force Kyiv’s European partners to shoulder a huge burden to maintain an adequate supply of arms – a move that would certainly pile pressure on Zelensky to consider a negotiated settlement.
Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky meet at Trump Tower in New York in September
Ukrainian soldiers from the Liut Brigade sit in a pickup truck on their way back to the frontline in Donetsk
An aerial view shows the destroyed city of Vovchansk in the Kharkiv Region, near the border with Russia, on October 2
‘Trump does have a legitimate point about European allies having underperformed in defence and over-relied on Uncle Sam to protect them for too long, and this is a huge wake-up call to the West,’ Dr Russell Foster, Senior Lecturer in British and International Politics at King’s College London, told MailOnline.
‘But Europe, Canada, and Australasia have let their defence spending stagnate for so long, they have nowhere near the industrial base and military infrastructure to help defend Ukraine and themselves from further aggression without American help.
‘We are likely to see major calls for defence spending and investment across NATO – but this will take years to build up and be hugely expensive at a time of economic stagnation. The future of Western defence is now looking very bleak.’
Ed Arnold, Senior Research Fellow for European Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think-tank, added: ‘The immediate crisis within Europe will be how to continue diplomatic, military and humanitarian support to Ukraine without the US.
‘Whichever mechanism it comes through – NATO, the EU, or bilaterally – it will be incredibly expensive.’
Perhaps in a sign of things to come, French President Emmanuel Macron told a European leaders’ gathering this week that the continent ‘must not delegate forever our security to America’.
He argued that Trump would legitimately ‘defend the interests of the American people’ and asked: ‘Are we ready to defend the interests of the European people?’
MailOnline has contacted the Foreign Office and No 10 Downing Street for comment on the buffer zone claims.