A senior adviser to US President-elect Donald Trump says the new administration will focus on achieving peace in Ukraine rather than allowing the country to regain territory occupied by Russia.
Brian Lanza, a Republican strategist, told the BBC that the Trump administration would ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his version of a "realistic vision of peace."
"And if President Zelenski comes to the table and says, well, we can have peace only if we have Crimea, then he shows us that he is not serious," he said.
"Crimea is gone."
Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.
Eight years later launched an invasion of Ukraine and occupied territories in the east of the country.
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The re-elected US president has consistently said his priority is ending the war and halting what he describes as a drain on US military aid resources to Ukraine.
Lanza, a political adviser to the former president since Trump launched the 2016 campaign, did not mention areas of eastern Ukraine, but said that taking Crimea back from Russia was unrealistic and "not a goal of the United States."
"When Zelenskiy says that we will only stop this fighting and that there will be peace only when Crimea is returned, we have news for President Zelenskiy: Crimea is gone," he told the BBC World Service's Weekend program.
"And if your priority is to get Crimea back and for American soldiers to fight to get Crimea back, you're on your own."
The US has never deployed US troops to fight in Ukraine, nor has Kiev asked US troops to fight on its behalf.
Ukraine only asked for US military assistance to arm its own soldiers.
Lanza also said that he has great respect for the Ukrainian people, saying that he has the heart of a lion.
But he indicated that the priority of the US is "peace and stopping the killing".
"What we will say to Ukraine is - do you know what you see? What do you see as a realistic vision of peace? It is not a vision for victory, but it is a vision for peace. And let's start having an honest conversation", he said.
Trump spoke with Zelensky after winning the elections, and billionaire Elon Musk also took part in the conversation.
A source in the Ukrainian presidential cabinet told the BBC that "a good long conversation" between Zelenskiy and Trump lasted "about half an hour".
"It wasn't really a conversation to talk about very important things, but it was generally very warm and pleasant."
Trump's Democratic opponents have accused him of siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin and say that his approach to the war represents surrender to Ukraine and will threaten all of Europe.
Last month, Zelensky presented a "victory plan" to the Ukrainian parliament, which included refusing to cede Ukrainian territories and sovereignty.
During the election campaign, Trump repeatedly said that he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine "in one day", but he never gave more details.
The document, written in May by two of his former national security chiefs, states that the US should continue to supply weapons, but make the support conditional on Kiev's entry into peace talks with Russia.
Ukraine should not give up hope of regaining all its territories from Russian occupation, the paper said, but should negotiate based on the current front lines.
Earlier this week, Putin congratulated the US president-elect on his election victory and said Trump's claim that he could help end the war in Ukraine "deserves at least attention."
Lanza also criticized the support given to Ukraine by the Biden-Harris administration and European countries since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022.
"The reality on the ground is that European nation states and President Biden did not give Ukraine the ability and weapons to win this war at the very beginning and they failed to lift the restrictions on Ukraine's victory," he said.
Earlier this year, the US House of Representatives approved a $61 billion (almost €57 billion) military aid package for Ukraine to help fight the Russian invasion.
The U.S. was Ukraine's largest supplier of arms—between February 2022 and the end of June 2024, it delivered or handed over $55,5 billion worth of weapons and equipment, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research organization.
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