This is John Batchelor, speaking with colleague John Hardy of the Foundation for Defense of democracies

about the announcement by President Trump, former President Trump, as a presidential candidate candidate that he would seek to end or could end the Ukraine

war by the time he's inaugurated.

Ask Mr. Hardy about this and his observation is the key personnel leadership was watching very carefully and that it's unrealistic.

Here's John Hardy, FTDT.D. on Mr. Trump's idea of ending the Ukraine war in negotiation

by inauguration day 2025.

More of this tonight. much more. Thank you.

All right, so I think the Ukrainians don't really appreciate when Trump says, oh, I'll end the conflict tomorrow for one thing it's just not you know that simple

another thing secondly and perhaps more important for policy reasons is when Trump says

he's going to force a negotiated settlement and

one tends to assume that means not only pressure on Moscow but also pressure on

key and so the Ukrainians you know obviously don't want that at this point. I don't think either

side is really interested that much in negotiations. We've seen some, you know, so-called peace proposals from Putin that are really very

maximalist in their demands. I don't think a genuine attempt to negotiate peace.

So if remains to be seen how exactly Trump will get to that negotiate solution

that he promises.

I think even more worrying is a proposal by some of his advisors put out recently that would

essentially argue for withholding aid to Ukraine if they do not agree to negotiate.

So I think that would be really a worst case scenario for Ukraine.

It's important to keep in mind though that you know whatever you

know advisors say there's there's also a foreign affairs article by Trump's

former national security advisor Robert O'Brien recently that that could offer some insights into what a potential Trump

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