A former Trump administration ambassador who could take a top role in a second term advocated a Ukraine peace deal that he said would preserve the country’s territory but allow for autonomous zones.
Richard Grenell, who was Donald Trump’s ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence, suggested a plan that would face opposition from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has called for Russian forces to leave all the territory they took in 2014 and in the latest invasion in 2022.
“Autonomous regions can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, but you got to work through those details,” Grenell said Monday at a Bloomberg News roundtable on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
He didn’t elaborate, but the areas of eastern Ukraine that had previously been mentioned as “autonomous” are currently controlled either by Russian forces or separatists backed by Russia, and would almost certainly remain that way.
Grenell also said Ukraine shouldn’t be brought into NATO anytime soon, despite Zelenskiy’s advocacy for joining the military alliance.
Grenell said repeatedly that he doesn’t speak for former President Donald Trump and hasn’t spoken to him about the issue. But he is commonly seen as a candidate for a top position if Trump wins a second term, possibly as secretary of state, and his views offer a glimpse of the approach Trump might take and the advice he’d get.
His approach would also likely get a favorable reception from Trump’s pick for vice president, JD Vance, who has called for Ukraine to adopt a defensive strategy and negotiate with Russia. In an opinion piece in the New York Times earlier this year, Vance said he remains “opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war.”
During the debate with President Joe Biden last month, Trump said that if he wins reelection in November he’d solve the Ukraine conflict between election day and his inauguration two months later. But he hasn’t offered any details of those plans, and got pushback from both Ukrainian and Russian officials.
At a NATO meeting last week, the alliance’s 32 members offered Ukraine an “irreversible” path to membership but no timeline or details. Grenell cast doubt on the idea, saying the alliance shouldn’t expand until all its current members meet the target of spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.
“We have to be honest about whether or not we add new members to NATO,” Grenell said. “We shouldn’t be adding new people to the club when the current club members aren’t paying their fair share.”
He also faulted the alliance’s incoming secretary-general, former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte given that the Netherlands has been slow to meet the 2% commitment.
“That’s kind of puzzling to me,” Grenell said. “Why are we promoting somebody who didn’t do their job of getting NATO funding completely up and running in his country for years?”
More broadly, Grenell sought to tamp down concerns about Trump’s approach to NATO, even after the president suggested at a rally in Florida last week that he wouldn’t honor alliance commitments to mutual defense if a country isn’t meeting its defense commitments.
“I would argue that Donald Trump obviously cares more about NATO than any other president because he’s the one that’s trying to give it more money,” Grenell said.
He also pushed back against the claim that US allies fear a second Trump term, saying they privately want Trump back in the Oval Office, no matter what Biden or others have said publicly.
“When I have traveled and met with other leaders, you hear something very different privately,” Grenell said. “I’m very comfortable that we have a world that absolutely does not only not fear Trump, but they would like to see him back. NATO leaders would like to see him back.”
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
