“I thought Trump would withdraw from NATO and he hasn’t done that yet, but you can hear the music begin to play,” Bolton said. “There’d be a cease-fire in place, a militarized zone would be created, negotiations would begin, Ukraine would agree not to join NATO — which is a settlement that really, they could have written in the Kremlin.”
Peacekeepers warning
As European leaders scrambled this week to respond to proposals to end the war without the involvement of Ukraine, and as President Trump doubled down on criticism of the Ukrainian leadership, Bolton told the podcast that leaders including U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer were at risk of making the wrong decisions by accepting a Trump-Putin deal was likely to proceed and planning for its aftermath.
Asked how he viewed Starmer’s pledge to be “ready and willing” to put British troops on the ground in Ukraine to police a cease-fire, Bolton was dismissive.
“I’m against deploying a peacekeeping force,” he said. “Experience with the United Nations has demonstrated that once you deploy a peacekeeping force, it can become a permanent part of the landscape, and in this case amount to a de facto partition of Ukraine that could become de jure after a period of time.”
Bolton asked: “What exactly is the role of the force to be? Is it to enforce a cease-fire, in which case the rules of engagement would have to authorize the peacekeepers to use force to keep the cease-fire from breaking down?
“Or is it a U.N. kind of peace force, where violators get waved at by the peacekeepers as they go merrily on their way? These are critical differences, and at least I haven’t heard any discussion among the Europeans which of the two they have in mind.”