2024 hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy would end U.S. military support for Ukraine and "push peace treaty"
If Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wins the presidency, he says he would end U.S. support for Ukraine and instead broker a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine.
"I will end the war by ceasing further U.S. support for Ukraine and negotiating a peace treaty with Russia that achieves a vital U.S. security objective: ceasing Russia's growing military alliance with China," Ramaswamy is expected to say in a policy speech Friday, according to an advance copy of his remarks obtained by CBS News.
Ramaswamy would "offer a Korean war-style armistice agreement" that would cede most of Ukraine's Donbas region to Russia." And as part of the settlement, he said he would suspend U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, prevent Kyiv from joining NATO and lift Western sanctions against the Kremlin. He would also withdraw all troops from Ukraine and close all bases in Eastern Europe.
However, there are no U.S. combat troops on the ground in Ukraine, as Rep. Mike Turner recently noted on "Face the Nation." There are a few whose existence was exposed by alleged Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira, and they are tasked with U.S. embassy security in Kyiv.
"These concessions to Russia are significant," Ramaswamy says.
In return, he says the U.S. would expect Russia to relinquish its military alliance with China, rejoin the nuclear non-proliferation START treaty, and withdraw all nuclear weapons and delivery capabilities from surrounding areas of Ukraine and annexed regions of the war-torn country.
Since the war began in February 2022, the U.S. has provided more than $75 billion in assistance to Kyiv.
"Under my peace plan, Ukraine will still emerge with its sovereignty intact and Russia permanently diminished as a foe. Ukraine's best path to preserving its own security is to accept a U.S.-negotiated agreement backstopped by Russian commitments to the U.S.," Ramaswamy is expected to say.
The entrepreneur said his strategy "is the mirror-image of President Nixon's diplomatic maneuver that distanced China from Russia in 1972, except this time Putin is the new Mao."
Ramaswamy says his policy differs from that of two of his Republican rivals, former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, neither of whom has formally stated a Ukraine policy. Trump claimed in a CNN Town Hall that he would end the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine within 24 hours.
Like Ramaswamy, DeSantis has indicated he does not favor continuing to fund the Ukraine war, which he referred to as a "territorial dispute," a statement that was met by derision by many Republicans.