Former NATO Commander predicts how Ukraine conflict will end

The Ukraine conflict will end with Russia taking approximately a fifth of the country’s pre-2014 territory, ex-NATO commander James Stavridis has predicted.

Stavridis, a retired admiral who often appears on TV to share his insight on international affairs, told CNN’s Michael Smerconish on Saturday that Ukraine might also join the European Union.

“Putin will hate that part of it, just like the Ukrainians will hate the part of 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 end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours, he will “be the first one voting for his Nobel Peace Prize.”

Trump has previously claimed he could end the conflict in the first 24 hours of his presidency, without elaborating how exactly.

“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 get a “path to NATO, probably three to five years.”

He also said that the deal would probably 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 eventual settlement of the conflict, which escalated in 2022, will take months.

In October, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky presented his ‘victory plan’, which demanded immediate NATO membership. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Kiev’s desire to join the bloc – which Moscow has described as an existential threat – was one of the key reasons for the current conflict.

Zelensky has also insisted that Ukraine will keep fighting until it restores its 1991 borders, a task that would involve the recapture of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, Kherson Region, Zaporozhye Region, and Crimea from Russia.

Russia maintains that it is open to any talks starting with an acknowledgement of “territorial reality” – that the above-mentioned regions will never return to Ukrainian control.

Earlier, US Vice President-elect JD Vance suggested that the conflict could be frozen along the current front line, with Kiev forced to abandon its claims to territories held by Russia, as well as its aspiration to join NATO.