The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, finally unveiled on Wednesday the latest version of the peace agreement between Russia and the United States, a document in which Kiev and Brussels have tried to influence to correct the strong bias in favor of Moscow from the initial draft, a text of 28 points originally drafted in Russian and later sent, already translated by artificial intelligence.
In this new version, which is considered agreed with the Trump Administration, the document is reduced to 20 points. In most of them, there are no major differences compared to the text leaked by the Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev, prepared together with Trump's special envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff. However, there are still deep divergences on two key issues: the future of the Donbass region not yet occupied by Russia and security guarantees.
In the first case, Moscow demands that Ukraine withdraw from the rest of the Donetsk region, precisely where the Ukrainian Army maintains its best-defended strongholds and where Russia has been bogged down in a war of attrition since 2014 with a cost reminiscent of some battles of World War II. The United States has proposed creating a demilitarized zone in that territory. Zelensky would be willing to accept that status as long as it continues to be considered Ukrainian territory, adopts the form of a special economic zone, and is militarily monitored by international troops to prevent the infiltration of "little green men," a clear reference to the Russian soldiers who occupied Crimea in 2014 without insignia or official identification.
Regarding security guarantees, Ukraine would accept a system that includes an international deployment to protect the country from a new invasion and commitments to act by the United States and its allies similar to those of Article 5 of NATO, although without the need to formally join the Alliance. Washington would also commit to monitoring the contact line through human and technological means. In any case, Kiev will not recognize as Russian the occupied territories.
The possibility of becoming a NATO partner is another point that this version of the plan no longer rules out, unlike the original draft, although accession still seems distant due to the opposition of some member states. The Ukrainian Army would have a limit of 800,000 troops, a figure similar to its current size and higher than the 600,000 contemplated in the initial proposal.
Additionally, Ukraine could access the European Union through an accelerated procedure, while Russia should commit in writing —if such a guarantee has value— not to invade Ukraine again or attack any European country.
Zelensky also commits to hold elections once the agreement is signed and has already instructed his legislators to amend the current martial law so that presidential elections can be held, which is currently not possible.
The ball is now back in the Kremlin's court. But even though it is an agreement that clearly benefits Russia, it does not seem that Moscow will accept this version corrected by Ukraine and Europe, according to leaks from Kremlin officials to various media outlets.
Despite the efforts of appeasement by the United States, American intelligence sources revealed earlier this week that Vladimir Putin does not have a real willingness to end the war. The reason is that for almost four years, he has been receiving distorted information, as reported by the Financial Times yesterday, from his generals, who sell him great victories on the front and a Ukrainian Army always on the brink of collapse.
The reality is that most of the territory occupied by Russia was conquered in the first weeks of the 2022 invasion. Since then, for more than three and a half years, the troops marked with the letter Z have barely advanced, and when they have, it has been at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded to take cities reduced to rubble in the east of the country. Few Ukrainians believe that Putin will accept these proposals or that the invasion will end in the short term.