Vivek Ramaswamy to call for end to US support for Ukraine and Nato exit from Eastern Europe

Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur and anti-Woke money manager-turned-Republican presidential nominee, has a plan to end Russia’s year-and-a-half war against Ukraine — so to speak.

The 38-year-old political newcomer will unveil his plan to end the brutal conflict by halting American support for Kiev and “negotiate a peace treaty with Russia that achieves a key US security goal: hiring Russia’s growing military alliance.” with China”.

In a speech to be delivered in New Hampshire on Friday to mark GOP Lincoln Day in Belknap County, Mr. Ramaswamy will say his plan mirrors the late US President Richard Nixon’s efforts to break up the Soviet Union’s alliance with the People’s Republic China referred to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s status as “the new Mao”.

The Independent received a copy of his speech ahead of Friday’s event. It cites a two-decade-old treaty between Russia and the People’s Republic of China and the Borderless Partnership unveiled by Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping as evidence that a Sino-Russian alliance “poses the greatest military risk the US faces.” . He accuses President Joe Biden of “pushing Russia towards a closer military alliance with China, increasing the risk of nuclear war” by backing US and Western support for Ukraine’s defense.

While Mr. Ramaswamy, in his prepared remarks, refers to his resolution to the conflict as a “peace treaty,” his statement does not seem to fit the definition of the term.

By and large, peace treaties represent a final settlement of armed conflicts. Famous examples include the Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, and the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco, which officially ended World War II.

What he proposes instead is an analogy to the United Nations-enforced ceasefire that has been in effect on the Korean Peninsula since 1953.

According to his plan, Kiev would legitimize Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Donbass region by ceding it to Russia. The US and the West would end all sanctions against Russia, halt defense aid to Ukraine, and NATO would ban Ukraine from ever becoming a member of the 31-nation defense pact. The alliance would also reverse troop deployments on its eastern border since 2016, including the closure of all bases on NATO territory in Eastern Europe.

In exchange, he proposes that Russia withdraw from its 2001 treaty with China, end the “No Limits” partnership while ceasing all military cooperation with Beijing, rejoin the New START arms control treaty, all based in Latin America Withdraws forces and withdraws “all nuclear weapons and delivery capabilities” from Belarus, all annexed Ukrainian territories, and the Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad, Russia’s only ice-free port for its Baltic Sea fleet.

His prepared remarks provide no evidence that Russia would be willing to end cooperation with China or abandon its military presence in Kaliningrad, which has been a key naval base since Soviet times. Nor does he offer any evidence to support his claim that Moscow would be willing to sever decades of good relations with Beijing in exchange for an end to Western sanctions, especially given that Sino-Russian relations have existed since the beginning of the 21st century.

Despite numerous credible reports from US officials and other Western governments that the Kyiv Defense Forces have dealt a serious blow to Russia’s conventional warfare, he is willing to say that he believes Ukraine “will not defeat Russia militarily” without ” extraordinary intervention” on their part by the United States, which he said would reduce America’s ability to respond to a Chinese attack on Taiwan.

“Under my peace plan, Ukraine will still emerge with intact sovereignty and permanently weaken Russia as an enemy. Ukraine’s best way of preserving its own security is to accept a US-negotiated deal backed by Russian commitments to the US,” he will say.

The implementation of his plan for the Ukraine conflict marks the political novice’s first foray into foreign policy waters since the start of his presidential campaign earlier this year.

His opposition to continuing US defense assistance to Kiev aligns with much of the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party, which views Russia far more positively than the general US population.

In a press release, the Democratic National Committee condemned the plan as “a party against our ally while Vladimir Putin wages an unjust and violent war in Ukraine” and derided Mr. Ramaswamy as “the Republican MAGA presidential nominee.”

“Vivek Ramaswamy promises to end American support for Ukraine – which poses a threat to our allies on the ground and to democracy itself,” the DNC said.

The DNC also noted that Mr. Ramaswamy’s position is consistent with a majority of Republican presidential candidates, including the two candidates with the highest poll numbers: Mr. Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Mr Trump, who has long expressed an affinity for Mr Putin and has described him positively despite ordering an unprovoked invasion of another country, hailed the war crimes-ridden invasion as “clever” and “ingenious” just days after the Russian tanks . crossed the Ukrainian border.

Mr. DeSantis, who is a mere second to Mr. Trump in most Republican primary polls, downplayed the war – the biggest land conflict on the European continent since 1945 – as a “territorial dispute” and a flight across “borderlands”.

But James Stavridis, a retired four-star US Navy admiral who served as NATO’s supreme commander for Europe from 2009 to 2013, responded far more generously to the plan.

Mr. Stavridis told The Independent In an email, he said he was “anything for creative ideas in international diplomacy” and said he “would like to be able to say that there is a chance for such a solution”. But he added that he couldn’t say there would be such a chance.

For one, the former NATO commander said Mr Putin was “so deeply engrossed in ties with China” that there was “zero chance” that he would give up his partnership with Mr Xi.

He added that in his estimation Russia would “never” agree to abandon Kaliningrad as a base for nuclear-capable armed forces, and that there was no chance that Kiev would cede about 20 percent of its territory to Moscow.

“Neither do I believe that the West would be willing to withdraw completely from Ukraine and deny it adequate security guarantees or even membership in NATO. The red lines for both sides are significant,” he said.

But Mr Stavridis said he believed a “Korean-style truce” was the most likely outcome of the 14-month conflict, with the caveat that “it’s still too early to know where these border lines might go or where it might be.” compromises.” could happen”.

“Our task in the West is obvious, namely to give the Ukrainians everything they need in terms of material and training so that they are optimally positioned at the end of the negotiations,” he said, later adding: “One thing.” [he knows] What is certain” is that the Ukraine war poses “deeply complex problems with enormous, competing interests on all sides” with the chance of a simple solution “within 24 hours,” as Mr. Trump said at a recent CNN City Hall approach indicated[ing] negative infinity”.

While the former Navy Admiral was measured in his assessment of Mr. Ramaswamy’s plan, a prominent Republican Party foreign policy veteran was far less generous when asked to comment on his proposal.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a longtime member of the House of Lords’ Foreign Relations Committee, said The Independent On Thursday, he explained the anti-woke businessman’s plan boiled down to “rewarding aggression,” calling him “someone who really doesn’t understand how the world works.”

He added that rewarding Mr. Putin for his aggression would make China feel empowered to take Taiwan.

“You know, I’m glad people don’t think that way when it comes to our freedom,” he said. “Study history and give me an example where aggression was rewarded while you got less.”

Senior Washington Correspondent Eric Garcia contributed coverage from Capitol Hill