Former Trump adviser outlines strategy to end the war in Ukraine: Ceasefire, deterrence, and more European support

U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear: he wants the war in Ukraine to end and, to achieve this as soon as possible, he needs to start negotiating now. The Republican’s phone calls on Wednesday, the first official ones in his second term with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to agree to initiate talks “immediately,” marked the launch of his strategy, one that his former envoy for Ukraine and former ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, describes as having three pillars: sealing a ceasefire as soon as possible, establishing deterrence mechanisms so that Russia does not attack again in a few years, and securing a much greater European contribution.

For Trump, ending the conflict is a matter of personal interest. If he can achieve tangible steps toward resolving it before the war turns three years old later this month, so much the better. During the election campaign, he promised to end the war as soon as he got to the White House, or even before, during the months of presidential transition, by forcing Zelenskiy and Putin to negotiate. Now, after the announcement of the calls on Wednesday, he said on social media that there is a “good possibility of ending that horrible, very bloody war.”

The U.S. president’s statements have caused satisfaction in Russia. In Europe and Ukraine, there is concern that the process of talks will leave Kyiv and its allies in the background, after three years in which the Joe Biden administration always insisted on including the invaded country in any decision-making.

The European bloc, and Zelenskiy, also fear a favorable outcome for Moscow: U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared in Brussels on Wednesday that it is “unrealistic” to think that Ukraine will regain its pre-2014 borders, when the Kremlin illegally annexed Crimea. He also ruled out deploying U.S. troops in Ukraine after the war and, for the time being, offering Kyiv NATO membership. All of these positions were supported by Trump in his statements in the Oval Office, although the president qualified that Ukraine would indeed regain “part” of the 20% of its territory occupied by Russia.

Ukraine immediately expressed its willingness to cooperate. “Zelenskiy knows that he needs U.S. military support to survive, and he understands that he is not going to regain his territory by military means, but he cannot recognize Russia’s occupation and wants to try to get that territory by other means. And the country feels exhausted, it needs a break from the war. So this initiative suits him,” says Volker, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine until 2019 and former U.S. ambassador to NATO during the presidency of George W. Bush, in a conversation with this newspaper.

The former senior official also points to another key issue in the process: a message from Trump to Putin on social media, immediately after his inauguration, in which he demanded that he stop the war and threatened him with “sanctions, taxes, and tariffs” on a greater scale than those that Russia has so far endured. “He made it clear that Russia is in a position of weakness, and Trump is in a position of strength,” he says. “He did not mention military aid for Ukraine, but I think that was to leave room for Putin to respond,” he adds. Within the White House, the current envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, has expressed himself in favor of continuing this aid. The president has praised Kyiv’s proposal to deliver rare earths in exchange for assistance, something that he indicates will continue.

How things play out now will depend first on the outcome of talks between U.S. representatives, led by Vice President J.D. Vance, and the Ukrainian delegation in Munich on Friday. Then a team consisting of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Trump’s envoy and personal friend, Steve Witkoff, will discuss contacts with Moscow. Strikingly, Kellogg is not in that group.

Meetings between Putin and Trump

Putin and Trump are expected to engage directly in several bilateral summits. The first, the U.S. president said, would take place in Saudi Arabia “in the not-too-distant future.” Visits to the two leaders’ respective countries are planned for later, in a significant gesture for a Russian president who has been considered a pariah in the West for the past three years.

But the cessation of fighting is only the first step. After the ceasefire, deterrence against Moscow is needed: “You need to strengthen Ukraine sufficiently militarily and economically, give it membership in the European Union, you need to do everything possible to deter Putin from attacking again,” says Volker. The third aspect of the strategy is “burden sharing”: Europe taking on a larger share of Ukraine’s security after the conflict, with Kyiv also covering part of the costs of its own defense. “Trump is going to tell the Europeans that they have to be the ones to lead” in this case, the former official believes.

Trump, his former deputy adds, “would like to see Europe seize frozen Russian assets and spend some of them on arms for Ukraine. He would also welcome letting Ukraine borrow money from the U.S. government to buy weapons from the American defense industry.”

In Munich and beyond, Volker believes, U.S. representatives will press European partners for solutions. “I think there are NATO and European countries willing to deploy forces in Ukraine. If it is for training and equipping missions, perhaps air defense assistance, we would be talking about manageable numbers, tens of thousands [of soldiers], not hundreds of thousands, that is manageable for Europe. There are already countries indicating that they are willing, such as France, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Lithuania.”

If Trump plans to continue aiding Kyiv in one way or another, what is not on the table for now, as Hegseth made clear, is the entry of the invaded country into NATO.

“It would impose an obligation on the United States,” Volker says. But looking ahead, he believes, “there are two arguments that could make the difference. One is that another future war with Ukraine in NATO is less likely, the deterrent effect is greater. And the second is that it reduces the American burden. If a common NATO budget is created to support Ukraine, as Jens Stoltenberg suggested when he was secretary general, the U.S. share would be 20%, with Canada and Europe paying 80%. From Trump’s point of view, a better balance than the current 50%.”

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