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Donald Trump may call on European and British troops to enforce an 800-mile buffer zone between the Russian and Ukrainian armies as part of a plan to freeze the war between the two countries.

Details of the plan emerged as Volodymyr Zelensky warned that any attempt to make peace by appeasing Russia would mean “suicide” for Europe.

The plan is one of several being considered by Mr Trump, who said before being elected as US president that he would start peace talks before he enters office in January.

The idea, outlined by three Trump staffers, would see the current front line frozen in place and Ukraine agreeing to shelve its ambition to join Nato for 20 years.

In exchange, the US would pump Ukraine full of weapons to deter Russia from restarting the war.

The US would neither contribute troops to patrol and enforce the resulting buffer zone nor finance its mission.

What the proposed demilitarised zone could look like:

“We can do training and other support but the barrel of the gun is going to be European,” a member of Trump’s team told the Wall Street Journal.

“We are not sending American men and women to uphold peace in Ukraine. And we are not paying for it. Get the Poles, Germans, British and French to do it.”

‘It’s not our children who are dying’

On Friday, George Osborne said it was not realistic for the UK to keep backing Ukraine without US support following Trump’s victory.

“Is it realistic to expect a complete victory for Ukraine, the complete ejection of Russia from Ukrainian territory? And if it’s not, you know, it may suit our vanity in the West to say ‘plucky Ukrainians’, [but] it’s not our children who are dying,” the former chancellor said.

“It’s also totally unrealistic, in my view, to think that Europe alone, including the UK, can go on supporting Ukraine without the support of the United States, even though Joe Biden actually is rushing to spend the $61 billion that Congress recently voted in terms of American aid for Ukraine before he leaves office.”

Ukraine has signalled that it is willing to listen to Mr Trump’s plans to end the war, but has also said it will resist any deal that would look like a Russian victory.

Speaking at a summit of European Union leaders in Budapest, Mr Zelensky said: “There should be no illusions that a just peace can be bought by showing weakness. Peace is a reward only for the strong.”

“Since the July summit of the European Political Community in Great Britain, there has been much talk about giving in to Putin, retreating, and making some ‘concessions,’” he added. “This is unacceptable for Ukraine and suicide for all of Europe.”

Europe should write its ‘own history’

Several European leaders at the summit have called for immediate increases in defence spending in response to fears that Mr Trump will cut aid to Ukraine and roll back support for Nato.

“Do we want to read the history written by others – the wars launched by Vladimir Putin, the US election, China’s technological or trade choices,” said Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. “Or do we want to write our own history. I think we have the strength to write it.”

Ursula von Der Leyen, the chief of the European Commission, said Europe must pull together in the same way it did in response to the Covid pandemic, but did not mention Mr Trump directly.

Mr Trump has never explained in detail what kind of a deal he believes can end the war.

But allies have presented various plans which proceed from the idea of freezing the current frontline.

JD Vance, the vice president-elect, suggested in September that Russia would have to hold on to its current gains as a condition of peace.

The remainder of Ukraine would stay an independent sovereign state and its side of the line would be heavily fortified to prevent a second Russian attack, he said.

In exchange, Russia would get a promise of Ukrainian neutrality.

“It doesn’t join NATO, it doesn’t join some of these sort of allied institutions,” Mr. Vance said in an interview with the Shawn Ryan Show podcast in September. “I think that’s ultimately what this looks like.”

In June Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz, who advised Mr Trump during his first presidency, presented him with another proposal that called for America to cut aid to Ukraine unless it entered peace talks.

Mr Zelensky has previously ruled out exchanging land for peace and says Nato membership is the only way to guarantee Russia does not re-invade.

A ceasefire that leaves Russia in control of land it has captured and does not include serious security guarantees could prove unpopular and would probably trigger elections in Ukraine.

Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst, said Ukraine would not resist American pressure for talks because of the danger of a suspension of aid.

He said the Ukrainian government might accept shelving Nato membership if it can get security guarantees akin to the US agreements with South Korea and Israel.

Russia expects ‘new territorial realities’

The Kremlin has yet to comment on possible peace plans, but Russia has few incentives to make peace immediately because its forces are making steady gains on the battlefield and it believes it can sustain the economic strain of the war for at least another year.

Dmitri Trenin, a well-connected Russian political commentator and former GRU officer, said on Thursday that the Kremlin would not take seriously any plan based merely on a freezing of the current frontline.

It would also need concessions related to “the nature of the future Ukrainian regime, its military and military-economic potential, as well as the military-political status of Ukraine” as well as “new territorial realities,” he wrote in Kommersant, a Russian broadsheet.

The version of the plan Mr Trump opts for is likely to depend on his choice of cabinet.

Mike Pompeo, who served as Mr Trump’s Secretary of State during his first term and is now tipped to head the Pentagon, has criticised the Biden administration for providing too little help too slowly and is likely to resist a deal that could be interpreted as a Russian victory.

Richard Grennell, Mr Trump’s former ambassador to Berlin and envoy to the Balkans, has said he would back “autonomous” zones inside Ukraine.

That suggests a repeat of the failed Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015, which saw Russia try to use areas of Donbas it controlled as a trojan horse for controlling Ukrainian foreign policy.

As politicians turn to immigration as a defining issue in the campaign, genuine solutions appear increasingly out of reach. The United States, a country built by waves of immigrants, is now grappling with a dilemma of illegal immigration, which has become both a flashpoint and a partisan weapon in American politics.

As Republicans and Democrats turn to immigration as a defining issue in the presidential election campaign, genuine solutions appear increasingly out of reach. Instead, immigration has become a high-stakes game, with each side focusing more on how to exploit the issue than addressing its complex underlying causes.

In recent months, immigration has soared to the top of voters’ concerns. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center revealed that about 60 percent of Americans now view immigration as important to their vote, up significantly from previous years.

While Republican and Democrat politicians have both responded with intensified rhetoric, they have done little to bridge their divide on how to handle the issue. Instead, state and federal authorities are caught in conflicts that reflect the country’s deepening partisan split.

Last year, Republican-led states including Texas and Florida transported undocumented immigrants to Democratic strongholds like New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Early this year, in order to deter migrant crossing, Texas deployed National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, laid concertina wire border barriers and prevented federal agents from monitoring the border, highlighting the lack of a coordinated national approach.

As the presidential election looms, Democrats and Republicans are doubling down on immigration as a means to rally their bases. Democrats continue to advocate for policies that portray them as champions of immigrant rights, emphasizing humane treatment and protections. While the Democratic stance resonates with their core supporters, it also serves an electoral strategy: immigrants and their descendants represent a growing and potentially reliable base for the party.

However, with an increasing number of voters in favor of stronger immigration control, Democrats have started to shift their position. In June, President Joe Biden issued an executive order restricting asylum claims, limiting legal pathways at the U.S.-Mexico border in a rare departure from the party’s traditional stance. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has echoed this shift, advocating for both legalization pathways and stronger border enforcement.

Republicans, meanwhile, have adopted an increasingly hardline stance, framing immigration as a national security threat and opposing any form of legalization for undocumented immigrants. The Trump camp has ramped up its rhetoric, promising to conduct mass deportation if elected and blaming undocumented immigrants for issues like housing shortages and inflation, aiming to weaken support for Democrats among minority and union voters.

However, despite both parties’ claims to prioritize voter interests, neither side has developed practical, actionable solutions. Democrats and Republicans alike focus on exploiting immigration as a wedge issue, stirring up partisan animosity without tackling the root causes of the problem.

The immigration issue has exposed structural weaknesses in American governance. Historically, U.S. immigration policies were skewed in favor of Europeans, while those from Asia and Latin America faced heavy restrictions, pushing many into illegal pathways.

Undocumented immigrants have been an indispensable element in the U.S. society for decades. They have filled the need for essential yet low-paying and high-risk jobs that citizens largely passed up, promoted consumption, and brought benefits to the U.S. economy. However, the group remains marginalized and vulnerable.

A recent Pew Research Center survey revealed that three-quarters of U.S. voters believe undocumented immigrants primarily take jobs that Americans don’t want to do, with 90 percent of Harris supporters and 59 percent of Trump supporters sharing that view respectively.

Despite this wide acknowledgment of immigrants’ contributions, both legal and undocumented immigration have emerged as charged topics in the Nov. 5 election. At the forefront of the debate is a growing call for control, with some even pushing for large-scale deportations.

Why, after years of dependency on immigrant labor, has immigration become such a heated political issue in the United States? The answer lies, in part, in a shifting economic landscape that has seen newcomers painted as scapegoats.

In a time of economic uncertainties, critics argue that recent waves of undocumented immigrants now compete with low-skilled American workers, intensifying existing domestic job pressures. The decline in social mobility, as class divisions harden, compounds these anxieties.

The U.S. has seen the biggest gap between the rich and the poor since the Great Depression in 1929. As noted by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz during the 2022 James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Lecture in Economic Inequality, hosted by the Institute of Politics, the United States has “more inequality than other countries and remarkably less equality of opportunity than almost any other country.”

Locked into this tense economic environment, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle face mounting public pressure. Once willing to negotiate and collaborate on nuanced immigration reform, Republicans and Democrats now find themselves at an impasse. And miserably, immigrants have fallen victim to deepening political polarization.

Neither side can afford to alienate wealthy donors or find palatable solutions to create enough jobs, increase incomes and narrow the gap between the wealthy and the poor to alleviate voters’ frustrations. As a result, rather than seeking a bipartisan approach to address immigration constructively, they have taken to using undocumented immigrants, who cannot vote in the elections, as convenient scapegoats in the political battle.