The peace treaty to end this bloody invasion of Ukraine will determine whether Europe is facing a post-war or pre-war scenario. Currently, this text places us closer to the latter. There is no difference in how the Kremlin proposed to dismantle Ukraine in the talks in Istanbul in 2022, in Riyadh in 2025, and in the current plan. In that sense, Putin's Russia has been consistent. But the novelty is that now it has the complicity of Donald Trump. If Ukraine does not accept the text, the US will cut off all future arms deliveries and intelligence aid to Ukraine. "Zelenski will have to like it and approve it," said the US president yesterday.
As the hours pass, and following the Russian leak of the 28-point document for peace in Ukraine, more details of the proposal are being revealed, drafted by two businessmen unrelated to diplomacy and politics: Steve Witkoff, former real estate developer and Trump's envoy to the Middle East, and Kiril Dmitriev, director of Russia's sovereign fund. The text would leave Ukraine defenseless against a future Russian attack and would grant Putin and his war criminals total judicial immunity.
Those who say the agreement seems drafted in the Kremlin may not be exaggerating: reporter Luke Harding from The Guardian confirmed yesterday that the entire text or some of its parts were originally written in Russian, as the English translation from Cyrillic includes typical transcription errors like the third point: "It is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries and that NATO will not expand further." The passive construction "it is expected" is unusual in English but is a direct translation from Russian.
The most controversial point, which is unacceptable for Ukraine and Europe, is granting control of the Donetsk region not yet occupied to Russia (point 21): yesterday, Ukraine's representative at the UN rejected the agreement, but Zelenski was more cryptic later: "Ukraine could face a very difficult decision: either lose its dignity or risk losing a key partner, either accept 28 difficult points or face an extremely harsh winter, the harshest of all," the president stated in a national address.
"Next week will be tough. There will be a lot of pressure, both politically and in the media, to divide us," continued the Ukrainian president. "I will propose alternatives, but we will definitely not give the enemy reasons to say that Ukraine does not want peace." Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, opposed the plan with the argument: "The contact line must remain the basis of any negotiation," referring to the total handover of Donetsk to Russia. And Kaja Kallas, the head of European diplomacy, summarized the Union's position yesterday: "The European plan has two points: first, weaken Russia; second, support Ukraine." Europe (Macron, Merz, Starmer, and Von der Leyen) is urgently seeking an alternative version of the text to convince Trump of the proposal's unacceptability. They have until next Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the US, which is the day Donald Trump has chosen as the ultimatum. "He will have to approve it. It's very sad. Last month they lost 25,000 soldiers. We haven't seen anything like this since World War II," reiterated Trump yesterday.
The first point of the agreement states: "Ukraine's sovereignty will be confirmed," but in the remaining 27 points, the document strives to undermine that sovereignty. For example, in point 7, the agreement dictates: "Ukraine agrees to include in its Constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision preventing Ukraine's future accession." In other words, Ukraine will no longer be sovereign to decide its military alliances, nor its own educational framework (point 20): "Ukraine will adopt EU standards on religious tolerance and protection of linguistic minorities." Even in point 6, its armed forces are limited to 600,000 soldiers (currently 850,000).
Point 3, for example, is as empty as it is absurd: "It is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries and that NATO will not expand further." How can it be "expected"? What kind of commitment is that? Not only does it sound like a childish scolding from a teacher to her most unruly student, but it buys into the Russian narrative (NATO expansion) without acknowledging what it actually was: a voluntary realignment of Eastern countries with a defensive alliance to prevent Russia from swallowing them again.
The agreement also mandates that Ukraine hold elections within 100 days after the agreement is signed (point 25), one of the Russian demands that Zelenski's government considers illegitimate, despite having emerged democratically from much cleaner elections than any held in Russia in the last 25 years.
Some points may make sense, such as 19, which states that the Zaporizhia nuclear plant will operate under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and provide electricity to both free and occupied Ukraine, but others are directly an extension of Russian propaganda, like point 20, which says: "All Nazi ideology and activity must be rejected and prohibited." The issue of denazification has always been a pretext of Putinism to dehumanize the Ukrainian people in the invasion. The fact that the White House buys into this mindset at this point is, at the very least, surprising.
The text is deliberately vague on a key point (number 5) for Ukraine: Kiev will receive reliable security guarantees, but it stipulates that no foreign army will set foot in the country, meaning that with that statement, it would thwart all plans of the so-called "coalition of the willing" led by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Macron. The US commits to providing those security guarantees, but at the same time, the text explicitly states that there will be no Western armies in Ukraine. So, how does Washington plan to defend those guarantees?
Regarding the security guarantees issue, the US states that it seeks a framework similar to NATO's Article 5 to protect Kiev from another Russian invasion: "The US declares that a significant, deliberate, and sustained armed attack by Russia across the agreed ceasefire line into Ukrainian territory will be considered an attack threatening the peace and security of the transatlantic community. In such a case, the US president, exercising his constitutional authority and following immediate consultations with Ukraine, NATO, and its European partners, will determine the necessary measures to restore security." The problem with this point is that it closely resembles existing commitments signed in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, signed with Russia and the US, which have not been respected.
Point 8 reaches the height of vagueness: "European fighters will be stationed in Poland." There are already European fighters in Poland, but does that mean they cannot be stationed in the Baltic countries, for example? It rather seems that Russia prohibits Ukraine from having its fleet of F16 and Mirage, in addition to allied fighters it may acquire, on Ukrainian soil, another point that would be unacceptable for Kiev.
The Institute for the Study of War states that "timely and sufficient Western military assistance, along with arms sales to Ukraine and firm economic measures by the US and other Western countries against Russia, would allow Ukraine to inflict greater losses on Russia on the battlefield and, therefore, challenge Putin's theory of victory. In contrast, the proposed peace plan cedes all Western and Ukrainian influence to Russia."
Bridget Brink, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, wrote on her X account: "This plan is unthinkable for Ukraine and undermines the national security of the United States. Appeasing dictators never achieves lasting peace. It didn't work in 1938, and it won't work now." Jessica Berlin, an analyst at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), believes that this plan "is designed to be rejected so that Moscow and US isolationists can say, 'We offered peace; Europe rejected it'."