NEW YORK, December 18. /TASS/. One phone call from US President Donald Trump to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin may put an end to the Ukrainian conflict, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, Professor Jeffrey Sachs has told Tucker Carlson.

"All he has to do - really all he has to do - is pick up the phone, and call President Putin, and say: ‘You know, that 30-year effort to expand NATO to Ukraine and to Georgia was ridiculous, unacceptable, unnecessary provocation, and it has led us to this juncture. I’m against it, I’m going to say it publicly, we are going to end this adventurism and you stop fighting today.' And the fighting will stop that moment, actually," Sachs said in an interview.

In his words, although details of a future peace agreement, including new borders, would still have to be negotiated, but the conflict will be over. In his opinion, the core reason behind the conflict needs to be addressed in order to resolve it.

On December 16, Trump said that Zelensky should be ready to agree to make a deal to end the Ukraine conflict. Also, the Republican actually signaled that, in his view, Kiev does not need to try and retake some of Ukrainian soil lost to Russia. Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th president of the United States on January 20, 2025.

Russian President Vladimir Putin set out the country’s conditions for resolving the situation in Ukraine. Among them are the withdrawal of the Ukrainian armed forces from Donbass and Novorossiya and Kiev’s refusal to join NATO. In addition, Russia wants all Western sanctions against it lifted and demands that Ukraine commit to a non-aligned and nuclear-free status.