Securing Ukraine’s Future: What Should the United States Do?

President Donald Trump has indicated his desire to bring a speedy end to the war in Ukraine. How this goal will be accomplished, given the numerous obstacles, remains to be seen. In a series of publications, CFR experts on Ukraine and Russia provide a complementary set of policy recommendations aimed at ensuring Ukraine’s survival and success as an independent state.

This meeting is part of the Council Special Initiative on Securing Ukraine’s Future and Wachenheim Program on Peace and Security.

 

 

DEYOUNG: Good morning, everybody. So nice to see this civilized arrangement of seating instead of the—instead of the rows. You can actually see everybody. That’s great.

Welcome. I’m Karen DeYoung. I write about national security for the Washington Post. And what we’re talking about today is “Securing Ukraine’s Future—What Should the United States Do?”

It’s sort of conventional wisdom now, this year, as the war gets to its third anniversary, that this will likely be the last year of the war in Ukraine. We may all be disappointed at the end of the year, but I think that’s sort of the thinking right now. And the question, obviously, is: How is it going to end? And when is it going to end? And on what terms?

The Biden administration left office saying that ongoing support for Ukraine and resistance against Russian aggression was in the vital national security interest not only of the United States, but of Europe and beyond. Donald Trump said during his campaign that the war would never have started if he had been president at the time. He initially said he would solve it after the election, even before his inauguration. And various members of his administration have now said that it’ll be ended in a hundred days, or six months, or at some other point in the future.

As we know, he has appointed a special envoy, General—retired General Keith Kellogg, to be his special representative for Ukraine and negotiating an agreement. He’s said that his personal relationship with Vladimir Putin will allow him to make short work of a conflict that has brought more than a million estimated military casualties on the two sides combined and extensive destruction in Ukraine, but relatively few significant gains on the ground for either side.

So at this point, I think it’s unclear how Trump plans to proceed. At times he’s said that the United States is being ripped off by its European allies, spending U.S. treasure to support a European war that should be left to the Europeans. He’s been critical of President Zelensky. Last week he threatened sanctions and tariffs against Russia. But he’s said very little about what kind of agreement he seeks and how it can or should be achieved.

With its Special Initiative on Ukraine’s Future, the Council has given some very specific answers to those questions and a very comprehensive roadmap, and our four panelists here are going to explain them to you. (Laughter.) They bring, obviously, a lot of experience in Europe and Russia, worked both within and outside the U.S. government, conflict resolution, defense, strategy. And again, their papers—which I commend to all of you—outline a very—how to get a likely settlement whose elements will probably include a ceasefire in place, Western security guarantees for Ukraine short of NATO membership, and limited sanctions relief for Russia.

So I’m going to briefly introduce everybody, and I’ve written down their brief bios not in the order that they’re seating, so sit up a little bit. (Laughter.) And then I hope we’ll have what will be a lively and informative conversation for about forty-five minutes, and then have up to a half an hour of questions from you.

So, first, I’m going to introduce Tom Graham, who’s sitting right there. I’ll have to point at everybody. Tom is a distinguished fellow here at the Council. He’s co-founder of Yale’s Russia, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies Program, and sits on its faculty steering committee. During the George W. Bush administration, he served as assistant to the president and on the National Security Council staff as senior director for Russia.

Liana Fix, right here—I’m sorry; every time I lean over, this gets very loud. I apologize. Liana Fix is a historian, a political scientist, and a fellow for Europe here at the Council, where she specializes in European security, transatlantic relations, Russia, defense, nonproliferation; and is an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University.

Paul Stares, right here, is the General John Vessey senior fellow at the Council for conflict prevention and is director of the Center for Preventive Action at the Council here. And the title of his latest book, which I think is particularly appropriate for today, is Preventive Engagement: How America Can Avoid War, Stay Strong, and Keep the Peace. Sounds like Trump’s agenda. (Laughter.)

STARES: Mmm, yes.

DEYOUNG: (Inaudible.)

And last but certainly not least is Heidi Crebo-Rediker, who’s way down there, who’s a senior fellow at the Council’s Center for Geoeconomic Studies specializing in international political economy, U.S. economic competitiveness, economic security, and international finance.

So, Tom, I want to—I want to start with you because your paper kind of provides the roadmap within which other elements fit. It gives a step-by-step outline of how to draw Putin into negotiations, beginning with a phone call between Trump and Putin; and through a number of steps, inclusive of both Ukraine and Europe, and ending in a U.S.-Russia summit, to endorse a carefully negotiated agreement. So I wonder if you can give us the steps in that outline and when each element comes into play.

GRAHAM: Well, you know, I think it’s actually more helpful not to talk about the individual steps at this point, as more sort of the framework in which the administration should approach this problem.

You know, there are two sort of tough questions that the administration faces. First is how do you get Putin to the negotiating table to negotiate in good faith. And the second is how do you reach a settlement that is acceptable to Putin, to Russia, but also meets our minimal needs, meets the minimal needs of our Ukrainian partners and our European allies. And that’s not obvious how you do that at this point because the only thing that Putin is interested in at this moment is negotiating Ukraine’s capitulation.

DEYOUNG: Right.

GRAHAM: Right? He’s laid out a series of demands: abandonment of NATO membership, recognition of the annexation of the four oblasts, demilitarization, de-Nazification—and, oh, by the way, the West should lift its sanctions. And it doesn’t see a reason to compromise at this point because in his mind things are going his way on the battlefield, his economy has been resilient against Western sanctions, he sees the manpower problems that the Ukrainians are facing, and he also sees flagging Western support. So if you’re sitting in the Kremlin, why would you negotiate? Time’s on my side.

I think the real challenge the administration faces, along with our allies and our Ukrainian partners, is demonstrating to Putin that time is not on his side. And that has at least three elements to it.

First is that this administration needs to work with our allies and our Ukrainian partners in developing a common vision of what we’re trying to achieve. What’s the goal? The less daylight there is among us, the less opportunity there is for Putin to drive wedges between the various parties.

We, obviously, need to continue to support Ukraine. That’s financial support, humanitarian support, military support. The EU accession process becomes very important as a way of demonstrating that Ukraine is moving towards Euro-Atlantic integration.

And we have to develop a security guarantee for Ukraine. It’s not going to be NATO for political reasons. We have a series of bilateral security arrangements that have been signed with Ukraine that need to be combined in some way to provide something more than Ukraine has at this point.

And then we need to continue our resistance against Russia. That’s a combination of targeted sanctions that really get at Russia’s warmaking capabilities at this point. I think it also includes a ramped-up effort by the Europeans to expand and modernize their defense industrial sector to demonstrate that we’re actually prepared over the long run to outrun Russia in an arms race if that’s what Russia wants to do. And I think there are other opportunities that have developed where we can put pressure on the Iranians—who are providing, I think, essential support to the Russians—and also continue to have a conversation with the Chinese that would suggest that their support may not be forever with Russia.

Then the incentive is what Trump has talked about, a restoration of some sort of dialogue with Putin—a movement away from this idea that the goal of the United States is a strategic defeat or regime change; that we recognize that Russia is an important player; and we need to have a conversation about all these things. That starts with a phone call between the president. It follows up with a phone call between the president and Zelensky sort of making sure that Zelensky knows what’s being discussed and sort of where we’re going. It requires, I think, the administration at that point to begin—this would be Keith Kellogg’s job—a series of very intense consultations with our European allies, with the Ukrainians themselves, and using that as a base for the first outreach to the Russians to begin to get a sense of what the possibilities might be moving towards a ceasefire and a broader settlement.

Then I think it’s critical that this administration have a supplemental of some sort. We know that the aid from the last supplemental is going to run out sometime in the spring, but you’re not going to be able to impress Putin unless there is a supplemental that indicates that we’re prepared to continue this support into the future.

Then, after you reach the appropriate point, I think the president needs to make clear to President Putin we can have that face-to-face meeting you want, but we’re not going to have that face-to-face meeting until we have something substantive. That means that there’s going to have to be agreement on a ceasefire and a roadmap to move this forward.

The sort of other element in this, to do the choreography right, is that Putin needs to meet with Zelensky—or, excuse me, Trump needs to meet with Zelensky first, an agreement on the conditions of the ceasefire, the roadmap forward, and then have that meeting with Trump.

And I think if we can do that, we have a chance of moving this conflict and resolving it—or, moving it towards resolution in a way that meets sort of the minimal needs for Ukraine, our European allies, and the United States, and keep open the future for Ukraine’s full integration into the Euro-Atlantic community.

DEYOUNG: Liana, Paul’s—Tom, I’m sorry—Tom was talking about having a common U.S.-European sense of where we want to go and how to get there. Do you—how possible do you think that is? Do you think it exists now? Do you think that they’re prepared in the long run—you know, it’s been suggested that the way to kind of sell this to Trump is saying the Europeans will spend the money and we’ll provide the arms, because most of the money for the arms goes to defense contractors and other people—workers in this country. So is there a common vision in Europe? Are they prepared to work with Trump? And what role do you think they would play in this?

FIX: Yeah. Yeah, I think there’s—on both sides there’s a very convincing argument why working together is not only the morally right thing to do—it’s not only because of alliance unity and all the other reasons that we might mention—but it is in the genuine self-interest of the United States to work with the Europeans on that because a deal without the Europeans would be more costly for the United States. The United States would have to shoulder all the burden of a deal and also all the burden of a deal if it fails. If we have a debacle like in Afghanistan, where Russia would use its aggression perhaps during a Trump term, this will be on Trump’s shoulders. So it is in the U.S. interest to share the deal, to share the burden for a deal.

But also on the European side you mentioned what can the Europeans actually bring to the table. There’s a sense that the Europeans should be at the table just for the sake of it—(laughs)—for the perceived relevance of the Europeans themselves. And I don’t want to downplay how much the Europeans have done in the support for Ukraine; actually, they’re at around 61 percent of the overall financial, military, and humanitarian commitment to Ukraine. But it’s not—that doesn’t give themselves sort of the right to sit at the negotiation table. They need to bring something to the table. And that is what Europeans and what the United States should demand from the Europeans: If you sit at the table, what kind of leverage can you bring to the table?

And there is a lot of room for the Europeans to increase their level. Some suggestions that I make in this paper is, first of all, Russian frozen assets. Those finally have to be used for Ukraine—the full assets, not only the loans on the interest—because it will demonstrate to Vladimir Putin that he cannot outlast Ukraine in domestic economic stability; that there will be a continuous lifeline. It also prevents that Viktor Orbán in one moment vetoes those sanctions and all the money goes back to Moscow, which would be a terrible outcome. And the Europeans should also take the responsibility for securing a ceasefire through a European mission. They should put forward ideas and options to the American side how that can look like. And we can discuss in more detail what this means for Article 5, how much U.S. involvement there should be or not, but it should be clear that the Europeans are willing to take that responsibility.

And lastly—and I fully agree with Tom there—the EU integration perspective. There should be a clear deadline when Ukraine is expected to become an EU member. Otherwise, the Europeans will end up in another failed Turkey accession process that actually never—(laughs)—never really led to anything. And I suggest a deadline of 2030, which is realistic for Ukraine, it’s realistic for the Europeans. And I also suggest that this should be on the agenda of the United States to push the Europeans, and to say we are interested in this EU integration of Ukraine and you better get it going fast. So if the Europeans can up the ante and bring this leverage to the negotiation table, there’s real benefit for both sides along alliance unity, beyond normative reasons to work together and to make this deal happen.

DEYOUNG: Do you—Paul, I think that Liana just mentioned the unlikelihood now that Ukraine will quickly, if ever, become a member of NATO. And of course, you had Biden saying, you know, the end result of this is Ukraine will be a member of NATO. Stoltenberg said it too. Everybody’s just kind of said it. Do they just sort of forget that now? And in your paper you outline what steps the allies can propose, what Ukraine needs to do to be able to defend itself from—help from the West to be able to defend itself over the long term against Russia, that will give it confidence to go into a deal like this.

STARES: Yeah. So I think there’s sort of broad acceptance, if not public acceptance, that the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, certainly anytime soon, is—was slim before the election of Donald Trump, and I think it’s become even more remote since that time. You know, we know that President Trump is not the biggest fan of extending U.S. security commitments to new countries around the world, and so I just think it’s unrealistic. And if we are to get a deal on Ukraine, I think the certain prospect of NATO membership will probably be a dealbreaker. And I think Tom sort of more or less laid that out. That’s not to say that somewhere down the line NATO membership might be possible. And I’m—you know, I think to sort of preemptively withdraw that ahead of negotiations probably is unwise too. But I don’t think we should kid ourselves that this is going to happen anytime soon.

So the question is, you know, we have to more or less convince Putin that there’s nothing more to be gained by continuing fighting, while simultaneously convincing President Zelensky that there’s nothing more to be lost by ceasing to fight. And that’s, I think, the challenge we face. Now, there are obvious reasons why Ukraine will be worried about a ceasefire that leaves them exposed to potential Russian aggression. And you know, in principle, there are a variety of ways that that can be addressed. You know, they could try to seek nuclear weapons. And there’s been some sort of conjecture around that. But, I think for reasons that we can all appreciate, that’s not something to be encouraged. The possibility of a European deterrent force in Ukraine. You know, President Zelensky has talked about a minimum of 200,000 European personnel in Ukraine. I think that’s unrealistic. You know, would just be a huge number for the Europeans to field. That’s not to say something else that Liana has pointed out is plausible.

What we tried to do in the paper, and I see my coauthor, Mike O’Hanlon. And I want to acknowledge the work he did with us from the Brookings Institution. So what we’ve tried to do is to assess how Ukraine could field an effective, robust military force after a ceasefire that would be capable of deterring possible Russian aggression. And we lay it out. And I don’t want to get into specific details, but we assess what the initial requirements are. It’s not just defending the thousand-kilometer kind of line of contact at the moment, but also the flanking areas to the north of the current frontlines and even into Belarus, which extends, you know, up to 2,000 kilometers. A huge amount of space to defend. We lay out how it can be done through a multilayered territorial defense system—the initial perimeter defense supported by other enhancements to the defense through fortifications, mining, and so on. And that force would be, in peacetime, of around 150,000 troops, mainly conscripts, but backed up by a force of around 450,000 personnel that could be readily mobilized upon warning.

We also believe it’s necessary for Ukraine to develop a kind of strategic reserve, maneuver reserve, that could respond to threats as they emerge. And if there is a potential for Russia to break through in any future conflict that they could fill the—fill the breach, if you will. There would also have to be provision to enhance the defenses of Ukraine’s cities and critical infrastructure, which we all know has been under tremendous stress from Russian missile attacks and drone attacks. And the—so the total force would be around 550,000, we calculate, active duty, backed up by about 450,000. Remember, currently the—I think the size of the Ukraine force today is around a million. And the force we estimate could be fielded after a ceasefire would be much less than that, in terms of, you know, current strength. And would probably cost in the region around 20 to 40 billion (dollars) a year. Much less—it’s still a lot of money—but much less than is being spent today on the defense of Ukraine.

So we feel that that would be, I think, sufficient to deter Russian recidivism, Russian aggression in the future. But it does require two things. There’s kind of a need to do and a nice to do. The need to do is that any ceasefire agreement cannot in any way restrict Ukraine’s ability to field such a force. So they can’t be, as I think some Russian commentators have suggested, that Ukraine, you know, be limited in the forces it can field. So that’s definitely the case. And it should not preclude the possibility of, I think, Western assistance too, which will be essential for many, many years to come. Ukraine cannot do this alone. But it has the personnel to do this, even with the demographic challenges it faces.

The nice to do is that a ceasefire agreement should not be just about ending the conflict. It should be about helping or enhancing Ukraine’s defensive needs after a ceasefire. And so there are a variety of precedents that we’ve seen from other ceasefire agreements which can help or help prevent a kind of breach or violation in the future. And we’re talking about, you know, inspections, monitoring forces, overflight, surveillance, restrictions on the movement of forces close to the line of control. So there’s a variety of ways in which a ceasefire agreement can be negotiated that would enhance Ukraine’s defensive prospects afterwards. And so when—I’m hoping that when the Trump administration, if and when it does actually get involved in ceasefire, they think through those additional provisions that would help defend Ukraine for the long haul.

DEYOUNG: Heidi, I wonder if we can actually bring Ukraine itself into this conversation. (Laughter, applause.) What they—what they brought to the table—what they bring to the table and what they’re willing and able to do. You know, we’ve—there have been—there’s been a lot of reporting and conflict about mobilization. And we’re talking about huge forces here, hopefully not—that don’t have to fight, but just have to exist in order to be a deterrent. How do you see both the political situation in Ukraine contributing to this, and the actual willingness to contribute it—to participate in it, in a situation where they have to say, OK, Russians, you can stay for however long on this territory.

CREBO-REDIKER: So I would—I would start with the fact that, from a Trump administration perspective, we are in very different territory in terms of how they are going to approach our foreign policy, generally. And it’s in a what’s in it for me approach. And so what I did in my paper was say, OK, so even with an America first, totally transactional hat on, Ukraine, is a great deal for the U.S. And I would start by saying the critical minerals and rare earth elements and metals that Ukraine has are some of the largest in Europe, in terms of titanium, in terms of lithium reserves, gallium, natural graphite. There are a lot of rare earths that are in contested areas right now. And I would say that at this point in our history, where we’re seeing a broader conflict between the U.S. and China on the restricting of critical minerals and rare earths, this is a really important area where geology is actually a geopolitical asset.

And Trump knows that. And the ability to go and actually do a deal with Ukraine that is in our economic security, that has literally, you know, wealth underground, that is something I could see the Trump administration saying, OK, this makes sense, not only because Ukraine could be one of our best business partners moving forward. And I’m stealing Lindsey Graham’s quote here, after he came back from Ukraine, saying they are sitting on tens of trillions of dollars of critical minerals, and could be our very best business partner in the world. So I would say that that is something where I would—that’s a good place to start.

We have the capacity with the DFC, Development Finance Corporation, to actually ramp up their balance sheet, enable them to provide additional funding and support to U.S. companies going in there to invest. And so that should be a fundamental part of combined U.S. and Ukrainian shared economic security. And then the counter to that is, should that territory fall into Russia’s hands it falls, by default, into China’s hands. And China is the country that is, you know, cutting off—we now have restrictions on gallium exports to the U.S. They have 100 percent chokehold on the full supply chain for gallium right now. And Ukraine is the fifth-largest producer of gallium in the world. So I think, you know, we need to start putting the larger pieces of the puzzle together.

Second, I would point out that they have the most advanced real-time defense innovation on the ground. And we don’t. So they are able to innovate and actually do incredible things with their—with their drone and autonomous weaponry that is—that pushed the Black Sea Fleet away, and opened up the grain corridors so that they actually have export corridors. They are real time in the month of January taking those long-distance drones and, literally on a daily basis, blowing up Russia’s refining capacity. And Russia doesn’t have a defense against it. So they are—they are literally at the cutting edge of using this technology. If you look at what DOGE is looking to achieve in the Defense Department, they want highly innovative, you know, quick change, quick turnover, advanced autonomous weaponry. And Ukraine has it.

They have the training on the ground. We’re already cooperating with them. They’re creating a defense mil-tech corridor, together with a lot of Silicon Valley companies. Northrop Grumman’s on the ground coproducing ammunition right now. This could be a real win-win for the U.S. in terms of making sure that we are at the cutting edge, along with Ukraine, in drones, and autonomous warfare, and electronic warfare, and all of the things that we that were not—we’re not up to the task yet here, and certainly not at a cost that is—that is acceptable. My third point in my paper is that they are some of the most technologically sophisticated and cyber sophisticated talent pool out there. And we could use help, particularly in cyberspace, with the frontlines against Russia right now. I’ll leave it at that.

DEYOUNG: Thank you. You know, I think all of this brings up some pretty basic questions about Trump, as Heidi said, and what he’s willing to do, and how he approaches things like this. About Putin, and about Zelensky, and the Ukrainian people, not to mention the Europeans. And so I’d like for any of you to jump in on these questions. I think, first of all, looking at Trump, obviously, the first encounter between Trump and Putin is going to be a very important one. Trump said it’s going to take place very soon. And there’s lots of speculation that it could be next week.

What we know from his past history is that he’s not very good at sticking to scripts. And are you concerned? What shape does this first encounter have to take in order to set the scene to have a real negotiation and make clear to Putin what the United States is willing to tolerate, or not tolerate, and what it’s willing to contribute to what end game? I mean, how concerned are you about this? How do you think it’s going to go? Does this first—does this first encounter, if it’s next week or whenever, does that—does Trump have to lay down some guidelines then with Putin? Or can we wait for this, what could be a months-long process as you described it, to even set out this roadmap that everybody agrees to?

GRAHAM: Well, you know, the first encounter will be a phone call. They promised that sometime after the inauguration. It will be sometime after the inauguration. But I think Moscow clearly—if you listen to the rhetoric coming out of Moscow at this point, they thought the phone call would take place by now. So they’re waiting. You know, I think that President Trump needs to do a number of things in that first phone call. You know, the first is that he’s prepared to talk to the Russians again. Because there are broad range of issues, not only Ukraine but strategic stability that we need to talk about. We ought to be talking about the broader issues of European security. We ought to be talking about the Middle East. We ought to be talking about the Arctic. We talked about energy as well. But lay out sort of a broad dialog that the two countries need to have.

But we’re going to start with the Ukraine issue. He has designated someone to carry the burden of the legwork for this, General Keith Kellogg. Who’s going to be on the Russian side? He needs to ask Putin to designate someone who enjoys Putin’s confidence who can actually conduct the negotiations. That will be the first sign of how serious the Kremlin is about negotiating. We can think about a range of individuals. I can tell you, if he says Foreign Minister Lavrov is going to be my point person on this then they’re not serious about negotiating. It’s going to have to be someone coming out of the Kremlin close to Putin himself. And then I think he needs to lay down the marker that, you know, we need to have a face-to-face meeting, but there’s no face-to-face meeting until there’s something substantive to agree to. And that, at a minimum, should be a ceasefire.

And then they begin the process of consultations. As I already said, the bulk of Kellogg’s work initially will be working with Ukrainians and Europeans on what is it that we’re trying to achieve, what’s possible, before he has the initial conversations with the Russians. And I think that ought to be clear to Putin as well. And then—and then we’ll see where—we’ll see where it goes from there. But, you know, the main point is that President Trump has to demonstrate that this is going to be a serious process, that he has some goals in mind, that this is a negotiation, and that the immediate goal is a ceasefire, and an understanding that a lot of other things are going to have to be negotiated after that. So this is not a—

DEYOUNG: But that Ukraine comes first.

GRAHAM: Ukraine comes first. The president has already said that. But it can be discussed at the same time we’re discussing strategic stability. After all, we have an arms control agreement that expires a year from now. The two largest nuclear powers in the world ought to be having a dialog about how you’re going to manage nuclear weapons going forward. So those can proceed in parallel, but the focus is going to be on Ukraine. I think he needs to make that clear in that initial phone call.

FIX: Just to add to that, I think from a European perspective, so far Trump’s approach towards Vladimir Putin has actually been a positive surprise. So there have been many negative surprises, Greenland and so on, but on the Ukraine side Trump’s threats on oil, on Russian economy, on sanctions and so on, have been surprisingly more forward-leaning, from a European perspective, than expected. So Europeans thought this is going to be a capitulation from the beginning. So that’s a good start. The question is whether this is sort of just trying to be tough before caving in. No one knows, right? Or trying to, you know, preventively prepare the ground for your own reputation, even if things don’t work out. But that is on the more positive side.

The question really is how to keep that line and how to reinforce it. And again, there’s a lot that Europeans can do. For example, it is terribly undermining to this threat perception that Donald Trump is building up if it’s leaked to the newspapers that Europeans are discussing the resumption of pipeline gas, and Germany and Hungary might be in favor of it. (Laughs.) It is totally counterproductive if LNG exports, not directly but via median countries to European countries, continue at an all-time high, because we remember the Europeans have not sanctioned Russian gas, and they have also not stopped importing Russian gas. Russia has stopped delivering gas to the Europeans. That was the causal—the causal pathway here.

So there is a possibility to try to reinforce Donald Trump on this path that either he himself or his advisors are putting himself on in the runup to negotiations. And European should try to reinforce that because what Moscow will certainly try to do, and we already saw this in some statements of Vladimir Putin, is to draw Trump out of that and to say, we need a personal conversation, the stolen election, the—right? So to draw Trump out of this environment and to put it into an environment which sort of flatters him, and where a one-on-one conversation without advisors might actually be not in the interest of Ukraine and of European allies. So let’s reinforce this path. And that’s what Ukraine and its allies, and especially the Europeans, should do right now, instead of undermining that path.

DEYOUNG: I mean, I think you’re right. I think that’s the biggest immediate danger, that Trump wants—he’s the dealmaker. He has personal diplomacy with people. He wants to get this. He wants a quick win. And yet, this is something that has so many moving parts and requires a lot of agreement among a lot of people.

STARES: Yeah. There’s another danger that was emphasized to me. I was just in London on Tuesday, Brussels yesterday. And that is that there could be a sort of a quick ceasefire, and everyone will suddenly relax about what—

DEYOUNG: You mean a quick ceasefire while they’re negotiating a deal, supposedly.

STARES: Well, regardless of the timeframe, it was sort of brought to my attention more than once that there’s a sort of fear that both the U.S. attention on European security and defending Ukraine will suddenly sort of evaporate if there’s a deal, and that somehow the war is over, when we know that the risks will remain for many, many years, maybe decades, who knows? And the same thing could happen on the European side, that they too will sort of relax. Like, well, the war’s being brought to an end, we don’t really have to increase our defense expenditures so much now, we don’t have to continue to support Ukraine’s security to the level that we’ve been doing. And it will create a kind of false sense of security or complacency around this enduring threat. And so I think that is something that we should also be mindful of.

GRAHAM: Can I jump in here? Putin is likely to help us on this.

DEYOUNG: I’m sorry?

GRAHAM: Putin is likely to help us on this, because he has made clear he is not interested in simply a ceasefire at this point. What he has said, we want an enduring peace, and we want to deal with the first causes of this Ukraine crisis. That gets into broader issues of European security. Goes back to the ultimatum, or the draft treaty that the Russians issued in December of 2021, which basically called for defanging of NATO, right? No further expansion, no location of strike weapons in Eastern Europe that can hit targets in Russia. And, oh, by the way, withdraw NATO infrastructure back to the lines of 1997. That’s what he wants to talk about.

So if President Trump believes that this is simply a matter of a focus solely on Ukraine, he’s going to be sorely disappointed because that’s not where Putin is in this. He wants a broader negotiation. And he can’t—and President Trump can’t agree to any of those things, and make this look like a success. So the real challenge here, I think, for the administration, is to think long term about this. Because this is a long-term process. We’ve got to get a lot of pieces in place. Russia is part of it. Europe’s part of it. Ukraine is part of it. And unless they are looking at conducting this for the—I would argue, the greater part of 2025 and probably in 2026, they are not going to get the type of outcome that they’re looking for.

CREBO-REDIKER: Just my jumping in as well. Ukraine’s best foot forward is going to be when there is a U.S.—when Trump takes a personal economic and commercial interest in protecting the borders. And having some—having some acknowledgement from President Trump that geology is a geopolitical asset, and that where that—where those lines are drawn and how they are protected, how they are developed, are deeply in America’s interest to actually have access to and work with Ukraine to develop those resources. Not for Russia and China, but for the U.S., Europe, and our allies.

DEYOUNG: Do we think that Ukraine has basically reconciled at this point that this is going to be basically a ceasefire in place? I realize it’s not politically palatable to come out and say that, but is that where we’re going to end up? I mean, regardless of how these negotiations go, that, at least for the moment, whether there’s a demarcation line and some kind of peacekeeping force that is there, that the Russians are still going to be there in in the fifth of Ukrainian territory where they are now? Is that—is that sort of a given at this point for everybody?

FIX: I mean, I think the Ukrainians are pushing for the Western Germany model, right? So what they want is to say, well, if we accept this—not formally, but we say we will not resolve this with any violent means, this will be resolved at some point in the future, they are ready to go for that. But what they want in return is a security guarantee. And they wanted the NATO security guarantee where, from my perspective, the window of—the historical window that we had to advance this has unfortunately closed. So we need to come up with something else that might look convincing enough for the Ukrainians to sell, for Zelensky’s side, to their population as this is akin to the West German model, and the security guarantees that we get, either through our own force, through additional European mission, through agreements with a ceasefire deal, are strong enough that we can see ourselves in this West German model.

DEYOUNG: But the end of the East German model required the collapse of the Soviet Union.

FIX: Sure. Historical analogies are not great.

DEYOUNG: I can’t—I cannot see—I can’t see Russia sort of—

FIX: Yeah. But it took decades, right? So who knows what—

GRAHAM: But, look, it’s wrong to think of this as a single deal, right? There’s not going to be a peace deal that solves all the problems. This is a process that’s going to unfold over time. I think, you know, the initial goal, as I said, should be a ceasefire. Stop the devastation that’s going on at this point. But the issues of the ultimate disposition of the territory, how you’re going to deal with reconstruction, how Ukraine is going to develop its security over time, how Ukraine is going to develop internally, to turn into that type of strong, prosperous country that will be, in and of itself, a serious deterrent against Russian—all those things have to be worked out in the years ahead.

So we shouldn’t be thinking of this as a single point in the future, and then we wash our hands of this, and we go onto something else. This is a process that’s going to unfold over five to ten years. And that is really the vision that we have to agree with our European allies and the Ukrainians. How do we want this to unfold over ten years so we get into the place we want? What do we need to do now that stops the carnage, but doesn’t forfeit anything that we want over the next ten years? I think that’s the challenge for this administration. That’s the challenge for the Europeans. It’s the challenge for the Ukrainians. And then you have to demonstrate that you can prevent the Russians from moving farther westward.

DEYOUNG: I’m going to ask Paul one more question, and then we’ll go to your questions. Just on the sort of theory and history of conflict resolution. President Trump and a lot of the people around him are not known for their patience. And as Thomas just said, this is something—if you look at Korea, you look at Germany, you look at similar situations that have been resolved through a fairly lengthy process, this is going to take a long time to figure out. How do you—how do you see that—even Dayton. I mean, the whole sort of endless months and years of people sitting around tables.

STARES: And we’ve still got the Korean Armistice in place. (Laughs.)

DEYOUNG: That’s right. And it’s just—at this point, it’s hard to see the Trump administration kind of committing things—to something like that, when the president has said I can take care of this in a couple weeks.

STARES: It’s a good question. Which is why I sort of raised this sort of sort of rising concern that it will be, well, I’ve scored a deal in Ukraine, I can move on to the next issue. And so it does require the administration be reminded that this is a long-term prospect.

DEYOUNG: Who’s going to remind them?

STARES: Well, hopefully the Europeans. I would, frankly, like to see the U.N. be more involved. People—you know, we haven’t even mentioned that, but they have longstanding experience not just in mediating ceasefires but maintaining them. And there’s a huge amount of expertise there. And I hope at some point the U.N. will be brought into this process, even just to sort of ratify a ceasefire, which will provide some political reputational barrier to Putin to think twice about violating. But, you know, I’m not sure whether there’s any sort of easy answer to how to instill this sense that this isn’t going to happen or be resolved very quickly. It’s going to take many years, many decades, probably, to recover lost lands, unless there’s regime change in Moscow next week and they say, enough is enough, we give it back. But no one is holding out for that prospect anytime soon. So we just got to be sure that we understand this is going to be a long-term prospect.

GRAHAM: Can I just jump in here again? Russian ambition will indicate that Trump can’t stop with simply a ceasefire.

DEYOUNG: That—I’m sorry?

GRAHAM: Russian ambition. The Russia problem that we face will not go away simply because we solve or reach a ceasefire in Ukraine. As I said, Putin wants to redo European security. They’re talking about strategic stability. The Trump administration wants to bring the Chinese into that. You can’t do that without the Russians. We’ve got the Arctic that is opening up. Russia is going to be on the agenda this administration for four years, just the way the Biden administration came in and thought that they could park the Russian relationship and deal with China. Found out that it isn’t that easy. And I think the Trump administration will find the same thing.

So, you know, what they need to realize is that they don’t need simply a policy for the Russia-Ukraine war. They actually need a Russia policy. And that requires a lot more work. And President Putin will remind us all along the way that there’s still things that he can do to make our lives difficult if we refuse to—refuse to engage with him.

FIX: And Europeans are seeing this in the Baltic Sea now, right?

GRAHAM: Exactly, so—

FIX: Almost every week by now, yeah?

GRAHAM: Right. So—

DEYOUNG: I can think of a million more questions, but I should bring you in too. Yes, sir.

Q: Jim Slattery.

I’m curious about your analysis of the body politic in Europe. There’s great instability in Germany, France, Italy. Are the people in Europe going to support Ukraine in looking beyond the political elites in Europe, that are being rejected? I mean, where are the people in Europe on all this?

STARES: Yeah. Good question.

FIX: So we still have—shall I answer directly?

DEYOUNG: Yes.

FIX: So we still have a majority of Europeans in most European countries that are in favor of supporting Ukraine. But we increasingly see, and especially in the election campaign in Germany these days, that there is this tradeoff made between pensions and Ukraine support, right? Suddenly that comes up in the debate, not only by the populists but also by mainstream parties, who are saying, well, we can’t deliver everything to Ukraine. We need things for ourselves, and so on. What about Ukrainian refugees? They’re part of the European social welfare system, and so on and so on. So these questions are popping up.

There’s still a consensus for support, but that is why the Russian frozen assets are such a crucial move for Europeans to go for. Over the long term, they will have to use this huge—this huge amount of money because they will not be able to afford and to sell to their own taxpayers why so much money has to go to Ukraine from their taxes if, at the same time, we have this huge amount of money there. So it just a—it just—intuitively it’s logical. It also seems morally right, in terms of reparations. And the concerns that Europeans have about the Russian frozen assets is that this will destabilize the euro as a reserve currency, and so on and so on. But the risks of not supporting Ukraine anymore, not being able to support it because of domestic reasons, are much greater.

So this is the big and obvious solution. And I’m pretty confident that Europeans will go for that, because at some point they will not be able to—yeah, to live with this tension anymore. And especially if the Trump administration puts pressure on Europeans, for example, in a kind of deal, OK, we continue weapon supplies, but we will not pay anything, not a penny above weapon supplies for Ukraine.

DEYOUNG: And there’s also that 5 percent NATO spending.

FIX: Exactly. There’s still the NATO spending. So Europeans will have to increase the debt spending anyway. The German debt break, the debt ceiling, the European Union, all that will have to become more flexible. But on the Ukraine support side, the Russian frozen assets are just the most logical thing to go for. And I think if we have that out of the way, the kind of tradeoff between pensions and Ukraine support, then I think we have a pretty stable support line, even with Giorgia Meloni in Italy that supports Ukraine and sees even Southern European countries that Russia’s ambition extend beyond Ukraine. And every day, and I fully agree with Tom, Putin is the best advocate for this position, shooting himself in the foot for everyone who argues we need to have rapprochement with Russia. If every day another undersea cable in the Baltic Sea is damaged, if every day there’s Russian intelligence activities, active measures, assassination attempts, and plans on European soil, so that just will be just very difficult for Europeans to move this to the side and to say, we can’t spend anything more on Ukraine.

DEYOUNG: Yes, Heidi.

CREBO-REDIKER: So just to jump in, because I think the gas—the gas card is a huge issue. And it’s a wedge issue in Europe right now because Ukraine obviously just shut down the pipeline as of January 1, exporting Russian gas to several European countries. And then, you know, there was this renegotiation. So it’s a—it’s, you know, going to be coming from Azerbaijan, which is going to be coming from Russia. And so it—I mean, Europe still relies—last year, I think it was about 10 percent of its natural gas imports were still coming from Russia.

And that’s just really got to stop. I mean, it’s time—it’s time to actually, you know, come to terms with the fact that there are other sources of gas out there, that there are other sources of LNG. President Zelensky saying start buying LNG from the United States, which I’m hoping does his case a little better with the president. And at the same time, you know, if we don’t solve that issue of how Russia is actually funding this war we’re never going to actually get to a place where the economy and all of the sanctions, everything that we’re doing, is actually going to start to really bite.

DEYOUNG: Yes, ma’am.

Q: Excuse me for not being particularly diplomatic, but—

DEYOUNG: Can I get—can I ask people—I’m sorry, I should have said this before, just to introduce yourself.

Q: Natalie Jaresko, the former finance minister of Ukraine. And I am currently a member of the CSIS commission. And I work with—I’m a member of CFR.

First of all, I really urge you when you when you have a conversation about Ukraine’s future to have a Ukrainian on stage. I think it would give a completely different perspective on this conversation than the one we’ve heard today. And I think where that starts is the framework from which you’re discussing—some of you are discussing this issue. You’re discussing it as if a ceasefire—I think somebody said, stop the carnage, and the president talks about that quite a bit—is the ultimate goal. I need you to understand that for Ukrainians the ultimate goal is freedom and sovereignty. And they have paid with carnage and are willing to continue to pay with carnage. So unless the goals align, it’s going to be very hard.

Someone said on this panel, what is it we’re trying to achieve? I think that is core. If it’s to stop the carnage, then your fear of a risk that there is a short-term ceasefire, or, let’s say that a negotiated ceasefire exists, President Trump calls it a success and then says, from here on in it’s Europe’s problem. Any failure thereafter is Europe’s failure. And then we see the coalitions all fall apart. And rebuilding these coalitions is not going to—not going to happen fast enough, may not even happen. And the Ukrainians are very worried about that. A ceasefire alone means we’re at war without our allies in six, twelve, eighteen, twenty-four months. So I think our ability to predict—and I would urge everyone not to use Putin’s words as some kind of Bible either.

The man has lied. He said that they weren’t his little green men in Crimea. There are lies after lies after lies. He’s a KGB/FSB officer. He says things for a purpose. He would benefit from a ceasefire that had that coalition fall apart. Front page news in the FT today, the Europeans are considering turning the gas back on. That’s how quickly everyone’s going to return to their old relationship. Which gets to the point of kind of why you guys are framing this as how to normalize a relationship with a convicted war criminal who’s committing genocide. It’s not about normalization. It cannot be about normalization. It can’t—I understand other things have to be discussed in parallel, but it all has to be with the idea that this is a pariah. He is a pariah. And I just don’t understand why the conversation is about normalization. That’s my question.

DEYOUNG: Paul.

STARES: Let me just say a few words in response. I share your very heartfelt concerns, Natalie. I think we—you know, we all are committed. I don’t want to put words into my colleagues’ mouths, but we’re all committed to the independent security and sovereignty of Ukraine. There’s a reason why we called the special initiative of the Council Securing Ukraine’s Future. It wasn’t just the future of Ukraine or Ukraine. And so we’re all fundamentally committed to the survival of Ukraine as an independent, sovereign country. And any ceasefire in no way concedes Ukrainian rights to lands currently occupied illegally by Russia. Nor does it make any—nor do I think we make any concession on restitution, and, you know, the whole group of issues around reparations and so on.

But I think we all share the common fear or concern about the trajectory of the war as it is now and Ukraine’s ability to continue to fight in the way it has, and to hold the line and prevent Russia from achieving some decisive breakthrough that does compromise our fundamental goal. And so I think, again, I don’t want to put words into my colleagues’ mouths here, that we feel that the time is right for a ceasefire. And while it’s often portrayed as an opportunity for Russia to rest, refit, and go at it again, it also, we should recognize, gives an opportunity for Ukraine to rest, refit. And we believe that if there is that commitment, it can be done.

Now, as I said earlier, there is this fear that if we just get a quick ceasefire everyone will relax and we think the problem’s gone away. And that is a real fear. But I think of the—in terms of the lesser risks, I would rather go for ceasefire, give Ukraine the ability to protect what it has now, and play the long game to restore its sovereignty. I don’t think—and Tom can speak for himself on this—I don’t think anybody’s used the word “normalization.” And I think we all recognize Putin for what he is, and what he intends or hopes to do in Ukraine. We have no illusions about that. It’s about developing a strategy that, again, will best protect Ukraine’s interests in the short term, and ultimately in the long term. So that’s where I—how I would respond to that.

DEYOUNG: Go ahead, Tom.

GRAHAM: You know, I want to address sort of two points.

DEYOUNG: OK.

GRAHAM: First, I mean, one of the things I talked about initially is we need to develop a vision of what we’re trying to achieve with our Ukrainian partners, with our European allies, the United States. And I would define that as the emergence of a strong, independent, sovereign, prosperous Ukraine that is integrated in the Euro-Atlantic community. That is a long-term project. A ceasefire can be an element of that, but it’s hardly the endpoint. And if we have that agreement, we begin to—begin to put in place the policies that move it in that direction. That’s why EU accession becomes—and that process becomes so important. That doesn’t end with a ceasefire in Ukraine. The security guarantees doesn’t end with a ceasefire in Ukraine. There’s still a lot that we have to do to fulfill the promise of these bilateral security agreements in terms of continuing aid to Ukraine, continuing to build up a defense industrial sector in Ukraine, continuing to integrate it, to the extent you can, on security aspects. That’s one.

Two, when it comes to Russia, I mean, I think we need to recognize that it’s not going to go away and it’s going to be a problem for us. And we have to develop some type of relationship with Russia. I would argue the goal is not normalization of relations. The goal is turning what is an adversarial relationship at this point, that is fraught with the risk of direct military confrontation between our two countries, into something, for lack of a better term, that you could call competitive coexistence. They’re there. We have differences. We are going to have geopolitical differences. We’re going to ideological differences. And the question over the long term is how are we going to manage that to reduce the risk of the type of military confrontation that leads to a nuclear cataclysm. And that’s just responsible statecraft.

CREBO-REDIKER: Can Ukraine help us with that? Because look what they just did in Syria. They turned the tables. They helped—with their—with their advanced drones and some training, were able to topple the Assad government overnight. And now Russia is trying to get itself some kind of a security on Tartus. And this whole thing has just happened in the past couple of weeks/months. And Ukraine played a real role here. So as we do face Russia in various parts of the world, I actually think the Ukrainians have a mindset and some real capabilities that we could actually rely on as a partner. And I think that Syria is a case in point.

DEYOUNG: I think—I think I’d say, just to wrap this up, taking all of your points—which I think everybody here does—that if you look at the whole of what the project is and what people have said and written about it, I think it’s—the goal is to avoid precisely what you said the risk was, that people say, oh, ceasefire, great. We’re done here. And to make sure that there’s a unified plan that Ukraine agrees to, the Europeans agree to, the United States agrees to, and everybody’s going in the same direction so that you don’t have people sort of flying off and saying, you know, my job here is done.

I’m going to try to take a couple questions so that—we’ve got about ten more minutes and—yes, there.

Q: Hi. Thank you. My name is James Siebens. I’m with the Stimson Center.

Thank you for having this difficult conversation. I wanted to follow Natalie’s remark by raising two other objections that I’ve heard voiced by Ukrainian friends and colleagues, objections to the concept of a ceasefire. One is that it would risk demobilizing Ukrainian forces that have been on the line for three years, nearly, and that Ukraine might have a difficult time recalling those folks to service. And then, secondly, aside from being—you know, the risk of allies ceasing their support, Ukraine would then presumably resume normal politics, or what would pass as the new normal politics. And so ending the state of emergency and having elections would pose political risk internally for Ukraine. How does the panel assess those two risks?

STARES: I’ll take the first.

DEYOUNG: Let’s take one more here. Yes, go ahead. And then I’ll come over here.

Q: Mark Katz, George Mason University. My question is for Paul.

Paul, you discussed the possibility of European troop deployments in Ukraine, sort of, you know, more or less, or whatever. What about the possibility of American troop deployments? Because it seems to me that without American presence it’s going to be very difficult to persuade the Europeans to send troops to Ukraine, if the Americans are not there. And it strikes me that even a small U.S. deployment, 5(,000)-10,000, in my view would have a have a huge impact. And so I’m just wondering if you could please address the possibility of that. Maybe the desirability as well as sort of the political possibility as well. Thank you.

DEYOUNG: And we’ll take one more from over here. Back there. Sorry, I’ll get to you next.

Q: Thanks. Jeff Pryce, SAIS.

Any ceasefire, to be sustainable, is also going to have to include real constraints on Russia. For example, Ukraine has sunk about a third of the Black Sea Fleet. That was the initial strategic objective Putin had in 2014 as justification for taking Crimea. So Crimea cannot be an air base for Russian threats on Ukraine, nor could Russia, say, be allowed to return sea assets, that it does not currently have available, to threaten Ukraine. So, I mean, it’s one thing that I think is missing from this discussion is—and I agree with what Natalie said, by the way—that any sustainable solution is going to have to include very real constraints—arms control, other security assurances—binding on Russia. Any thoughts on that?

DEYOUNG: OK. So what is the mobilization risk of Ukrainian forces in the event of a ceasefire? And how does Ukrainian politics play into the possibilities of success? Who would like to address that question?

STARES: I can briefly refer to the demobilization and the U.S. one, and even Jeff’s one. But someone is better equipped, I think, to talk about internal Ukrainian politics than I.

So that is a legitimate concern. And it is a serious risk that we have to worry about. The question is, is that risk worse under a ceasefire agreement than the present circumstances of an unending war in which thousands of Ukrainians are dying, and many seem to be, frankly, not inclined to serve now or return to their homeland, with the prospect of being mobilized for war. So, yes, it’s a legitimate concern. But to me, it’s less of a concern of essentially an unending war that really does undermine Ukrainian commitment to defend itself.

On U.S. guarantees to a European force, I think that is also an important question. I don’t think the Europeans would deploy a sizeable force in Ukraine without some expectation that the U.S. would have its back if threatened. And that is going to be, I think, a big source of debate and tension, probably, if the discussion goes ahead about what a European force in Ukraine would look like and what its mission would be. If it’s purely training and equipping, that’s one thing. If it’s there to monitor a ceasefire line or to provide a deterrent to Russian aggression, there has to be some sense of the relationship between that force and U.S. commitments. Whether the—I think it’s unlikely with this administration that we would see U.S. boots on the ground in Ukraine. But that is, I think, a big question mark about the future. And I think there’s—Liana can correct me—there’s going to be a meeting in a few days’ time, I think, on this very question.

Jeff, your point about ceasefire can’t be one dimensional, can’t be one sided, that it just constrains Ukraine. There has to be, I think, equitable constraints on the Russian side. And the Black Sea question, access, is something that is extremely important. We address it in the paper, and the kinds of things that Ukraine should do to maintain freedom of navigation and access to its Black Sea Fleets—Black Sea ports, excuse me. But, yes, there should be—you know, ceasefires typically contain provisions that restrict both sides. Otherwise, it’s kind of a one-sided surrender, almost. So it has to be properly negotiated.

FIX: Just to come in quickly on the European debate. So what I hear most from Europeans when it comes to the question, European mission or not, apart from first freaking out about having to do this, the next step is what the Europeans would want is to have U.S. support on logistics, intelligence, and potentially air cover. And then the promise to some extent, not necessarily covered by Article Five or anything else, but the promise that the U.S. will react—(laughs)—if Vladimir Putin would, you know, a misguided missile would hit European troops. So the assumption is that Donald Trump would have to negotiate something which gives protection to European troops, so that European troops, in a size from 20,000 to 40, 000, might be deployed to Ukraine on their own, with U.S. logistical support, potentially air cover, and do that.

It’s obviously a huge challenge for Europeans. They have never done something like that. But I think it is the moment to come forward with ideas, options, and proposals how to do this, not only to signal towards a Trump administration that Europeans are ready to think about and to take responsibility, but also, in the end, because it is about Europe’s fundamental interest. And that’s where I do hope that I’m—one can be a little bit more optimistic about coalitions immediately falling apart if a ceasefire takes place. Europeans have realized that it’s better to contain Russia in Ukraine than to have Russia at their borders. So they don’t want a scenario where there is a short-term ceasefire, that fails and Putin advances on Kyiv, right?

I mean, if you look back at the last three years the moment when Europeans actually really mobilized and got things going were the moments when they thought Ukrainians were going to lose. So they might not necessarily want Ukraine to win, or invest enough for Ukraine to win, but they know that Ukraine is their security shield against a Russian advance. And so it is into their own interest. And I also think, just from a perspective of Europe’s geopolitical standing in the world, saying that Chinese or Indian troops should take care of security in Ukraine is, on so many levels, not only against Europe’s own interest to have Chinese boots on the ground in Ukraine, but also almost a humiliation to Europe’s ambitions of being a geopolitical power. So this is something that has to be discussed and advanced. There’s just no way around it.

DEYOUNG: Heidi.

CREBO-REDIKER: One final word. There’s one person to convince, and that’s Donald Trump, to move forward. And he thinks in a very different way than most of the people, I think, who are members of CFR think. He’s already talking about Canada as a fifty-first state, buying Greenland, and taking back the Panama Canal by whatever means he’s thinking about. This is somebody who will be thinking in territory and Monroe Doctrine, you know, manner. Put Ukraine on the map right now as something that he cares about for America’s interest. And I would double down on the fact that he is looking to do a deal, but he wants to do something that’s going to be in America’s economic and commercial interest before he spends a dime moving forward to protect—to protect Ukraine. So we all need to start thinking a little bit differently about how we market our security proposals.

DEYOUNG: I’m going to have one more question from this gentleman, who’s been waiting very patiently, because we are out of time.

Q: Thank. Ariel Cohen, the Atlantic Council. Excellent panel. And excellent criticism, Natalka (sic; Natalie). (Laughter.)

A story—a quick story and a question. The quick story is that a high-ranking Trump administration official in a one-on-one discussion about Russia-Ukraine said, oh, there’s irredenta with Putin. I understand that. I think nobody here understands, quote, unquote, “Russian irredentism.” The question is about the oil and gas markets. Can you imagine a ceasefire without a permanent peace agreement in which we cede back to Russia the former pipe gas market in Europe, that was in excess of $50 billion a year, and facilitate the normalization of the oil exports, that is north of $100 billion a year? And I think on this point, President Trump and the U.S. business will have a very strong position. In the space of two years U.S. became a number one exporter of LNG to Europe. There’s no reason on the planet why we just pack toys, go back home, and give it back to Gazprom. Thank you.

DEYOUNG: Heidi, did you have a response to that?

CREBO-REDIKER: Just to underscore that I think that this president does want to—I mean, he says it as a mantra, drill, baby, drill, and wants the U.S. LNG market to—basically just to ramp up and increase and have that be an additional security buffer for not only Europe, but for allies in Asia as well. So I do—I think that he would probably be very upset if Europe started to increase their purchases of Russian gas again. I think he was pretty upset about it in Trump 1.0, as we were in the Obama administration. But we didn’t put it quite so—we didn’t make the case as well as we should have.

DEYOUNG: We are—I know how much the Council likes to stop on time, and we’re late. (Laughter.) So thank you to Heidi, to Tom, to Liana, to Paul, and thank all of you so much for coming and participating in the meeting. I should have said at the beginning that this was all on the record. (Laughter.) And so I’m telling you that now. There’ll be a video and a transcript on the CFR website. Thank you all so much for coming. (Applause.)

(END)

This is an uncorrected transcript.