James Stavridis has said he’ll vote for Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize if the President-elect can wrap up the fight in a day, as he boasted
Retired Admiral James Stavridis, a former NATO commander, has predicted that the conflict in Ukraine will end with Russia controlling roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory. Stavridis, who regularly appears on TV to offer his insights on global affairs, told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on Saturday that Ukraine may also join the European Union.
“Putin will dislike that part of it, just as the Ukrainians will dislike Putin holding onto 20 percent of their country. But it’s a negotiation,” Stavridis told Smerconish.
Stavridis has also said that if President-elect Donald Trump can resolve the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours, he will “be the first one voting for his Nobel Peace Prize.”
Trump has previously asserted that he could end the conflict within the first 24 hours of his presidency, without providing specifics on how he would achieve this.
“What I hope he does, and I think he will, is put pressure on both sides to get to the negotiating table,” Stavridis said.
He added that Ukraine will also have a “path to NATO, probably three to five years.”
He also stated that the agreement would likely include “some kind of demilitarized zone” between the two parties, likely patrolled “with NATO soldiers, for example, not US, Europeans.”
“A negotiated settlement is not something the US can impose, but for the Ukrainians and Russians to agree upon,” Stavridis told Newsweek later on Saturday, adding that an eventual settlement of the conflict, which escalated in 2022, will take months.
In October, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky presented his ‘victory plan’, which called for immediate NATO membership. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that Kyiv’s desire to join the bloc – which Moscow views as an existential threat – was one of the main reasons for the current conflict.
Zelensky has also insisted that Ukraine will continue fighting until it regains its 1991 borders, a task that would involve reclaiming the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the Kherson Region, the Zaporozhye Region, and Crimea from Russia.
Russia maintains that it is open to any talks that begin with an acknowledgment of “territorial reality” – that the aforementioned regions will never return to Ukrainian control.
Earlier, US Vice President-elect JD Vance suggested that the conflict could be frozen along the current frontline, with Kyiv being forced to abandon its claims to territories held by Russia, as well as its aspiration to join NATO.