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A quick housekeeping note: Rosie is doing great. Thank you for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.
As I start tonight’s update – 8:55 PM EST/3:55 AM local time in Ukraine – over 2/3rds of Ukraine is under air raid alert. Other than an indicator of a potential sea launched threat, there’s no indicators that Russian fixed wing aviation is up.
Noga Tarnopolsky has reported that Brian Lanza, who is a senior natsec advisor to the President-elect gave an interview to BBC Weekend. His remarks are not encouraging:
💥Senior Trump advisor Bryan Lanza throws Ukraine under the bus (if Zelensky wants Creemiyah back, forget it, he says, its gone) says there is no two state solution and Netanyahu– “he can do whatever he wants to get the hostages back.” @AlbanaKasapi bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0k3gh…
From the BBC:
A former adviser to President-elect Donald Trump says the incoming administration will focus on achieving peace in Ukraine rather than enabling the country to gain back territory occupied by Russia.
Bryan Lanza, who worked on Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, told the BBC the incoming administration would ask Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for his version of a “realistic vision for peace”.
“And if President Zelensky comes to the table and says, well we can only have peace if we have Crimea, he shows to us that he’s not serious,” he said. “Crimea is gone.”
A spokesperson for Trump distanced the incoming president from the remarks, saying Mr Lanza “does not speak for him”.
The president-elect has consistently said his priority is to end the war and stem what he characterises as a drain on US resources, in the form of military aid to Ukraine.
But he has yet to divulge how he intends to do so – and will likely be hearing competing visions for Ukraine’s future from his various advisers.
Mr Lanza, a Trump political adviser during his 2016 and 2024 campaigns, did not mention areas of eastern Ukraine, but he said regaining Crimea from Russia was unrealistic and “not the goal of the United States”.
“When Zelensky says we will only stop this fighting, there will only be peace once Crimea is returned, we’ve got news for President Zelensky: Crimea is gone,” he told the BBC World Service’s Weekend programme.
“And if that is your priority of getting Crimea back and having American soldiers fight to get Crimea back, you’re on your own.”
The US has never deployed American soldiers to fight in Ukraine, nor has Kyiv requested American troops fight on its behalf. Ukraine has only requested American military aid to arm its own soldiers.
Mr Lanza said he had tremendous respect for the Ukrainian people, whose “hearts are made of lions”. But he said the US priority was “peace and to stop the killing”.
“What we’re going to say to Ukraine is, you know what you see? What do you see as a realistic vision for peace. It’s not a vision for winning, but it’s a vision for peace. And let’s start having the honest conversation,” he said.
In response, Zelensky’s adviser Dmytro Lytvyn characterised Mr Lanza’s remarks as placing the pressure for peace on Ukraine when it was “Putin who wants more war”.
“Putin loses most of his people in assaults at the front. What does this indicate? It is obvious that he wants to fight on,” he said.
“Ukraine has been offering peace since 2022 – there are quite realistic proposals. And it is Russia that must be made to hear that peace is needed and that peace must be reliable, so that there is simply no repetition of Russian strikes.”
A spokesperson for Trump’s transition team – which prepares the incoming administration for office – said Mr Lanza was “a contractor for the campaign”, but “does not work for President Trump and does not speak for him”.
Trump is expected to handle peace talks with a close circle of aides once in office.
An unnamed National Security Council aide who previously served under Trump told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday: “Anyone – no matter how senior in Trump’s circle – who claims to have a different view or more detailed window into his plans on Ukraine simply doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.”
They said that the former president “makes his own calls on national security issues” and had done so “many times in the moment”.
Here’s Maria Avdeeva’s take:
If Mr. Lanza wants an honest conversation, here it is. This strategy doesn’t just empower Putin; it encourages other rogue states to use nuclear blackmail and invade neighboring countries, tearing down the world order. And, honestly, Putin has already said as much himself.
We’ve got a lot of mixed signals here. We’ve got the Ukrainian take away from yesterday’s call between President Zelenskyy and the President-elect (and the Starlink Snowflake). We’ve got Brian Lanza’s statements to the BBC. We’ve got several different spokespeople for the President-elect contradicting Lanza.
This is going to be the same ongoing problem it was during the President-elect’s first term. As we’ve seen over the past year with the various Middle East states and non-state actors that are in conflict, as well as the past three years in regard to Ukraine and Russia, things get immeasurably harder if there is not clear, deliberate communication and messaging. It is going to be especially bad during the transition as a number of people are jockeying for not just political appointments, but for specific positions with specific rank.
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.