New York: The US plan for ending Russia’s invasion is a remarkable document. It rewards aggression and punishes the victim. It undermines the most important principle of international law, which is that sovereign borders should not be changed by force. It suggests security guarantees, but fails to say how they would be enforced — and then limits the means by which they could be.
It amounts to the enforced capitulation of Ukraine for gain and profit, the blueprint for a modern Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in which one side’s interest in the division of Ukraine is territorial and the other’s commercial. It is, in a word, shameful.
And yet this should not be the decisive question, which is rather: Is this the best deal that Ukraine and its remaining European allies could hope at this point to achieve? The answer is no, and they’ve already rejected its key terms. But sadly, the question is also circular, because the answer depends almost entirely on Donald Trump.
First, the deal itself. On territory, Kyiv’s leadership and most Ukrainians have long since accepted that they will have to cede control of the lands Russia has occupied. Yet this agreement would do much more. It offers Russia international “de facto recognition” of virtually all Ukrainian territories occupied from 2014 to the day of signature, plus the so-called fortress belt of Donetsk that it has been unable to take. This area – critical to Ukraine’s further defense – would become a demilitarized zone.
De facto acceptance was what happened in East Germany and the Baltic States after World War II. NATO never contested Soviet control of these countries, but it also never recognized Soviet ownership or the German Democratic Republic’s existence as a state separate from western Germany. Eventually – decades later – all of these Soviet constructs reverted to their proper owners. There is no need to write the word recognition into a deal, de facto or not, unless the goal is to point to eventual acknowledgment of Russian ownership.
Next, a demilitarized Fortress Belt sounds reasonable. However, this is a huge concession because it would likely take Russian forces at least another year and tens of thousands of lives to seize the towns that make up the belt, two of which are far larger than anything Russia has been able to take since 2022. Meanwhile, once abandoned and given over to Russian control, these cities could not be reclaimed, or their natural defenses replicated. Russian forces could quickly move west, north and south – should they break their ceasefire commitments as they have in the past.
If the Russians were serious about never attacking again, and the US about guaranteeing it, there would be an explicit abandonment of Putin’s further annexation claims, as well as prominent provision for a capable international mission to ensure the Kremlin stands by its commitments.
Any attempt at ending the war for good would also enforce the withdrawal of all heavy weapons, attack drones and troop concentrations to a significant distance – measured in tens of kilometers – from the entire line of contact, including in Crimea, so that Russia cannot put Ukrainian ports and trade at risk. There is none of the above.
On financial compensation. The Kremlin is to forgo $100 billion of the roughly $300 billion in central bank assets that Western governments froze at the start of the conflict. The US would oversee the use of this money for Ukrainian reconstruction and receive all profit from it. European taxpayers would stump up an additional $100 billion. This is hardly a Russian concession: None of the frozen assets are ever going back to Moscow and any postwar tribunal would impose much larger war reparations, even if no additional money could be collected.
So, Russia loses nothing, the US profits, and Europe is stuck with the bill for rebuilding all that Russia destroyed — a total the World Bank estimates at more than $500 billion. Because Europe doesn’t have that money, Ukraine’s future would be one of impoverishment and instability, with European Union membership (permitted under the deal) a pipe dream.
Sanctions (on Russia) would be lifted over time and could snap back. This, like the entire process, would be under US control. And given that the deal specifies US-Russia cooperation on the exploitation of critical minerals, you can be certain it’s progress on securing those deals that would determine the pace of sanctions relief, and not Russian behavior toward Ukraine.
Finally, those security guarantees. There are some words calling for a response to any Russian breach of the agreement, but they are vague and the bar to action set high and asymmetrically. Any Russian breach must be “significant” and “sustained” to trigger a response, whereas a single missile shot into Russian territory by Ukraine would invalidate the guarantees for good – the work of an afternoon for Russia’s false flag specialists.
Not that this would matter greatly, because the plan’s 28 points include nothing about what would be done, or by whom, should Russia reinvade. These are the same kinds of vague assurances that France, Russia, the UK and the US gave to Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nuclear deterrent in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum — assurances that proved worthless.
Other clauses undermine the only plausible security guarantee that Ukraine could be given, which is to strengthen its defenses to the point that any future Russian attack would be futile. Its forces, currently overstretched at 800,000 to 900,000, would under Trump’s plan be reduced to 600,000, while Russia’s would face no such limitations, even geographically. NATO members would be prevented from putting troops on Ukrainian soil, further limiting options for either guarantees or monitoring.
Trump could, if he wanted, pressure Putin into signing up to a genuine end to the war, but he chooses not to because he has far more leverage to use in Kyiv, and far more to gain in Moscow. Even so, no Ukrainian leader can or should accept this deal and nor should Europe. It would guarantee an uprising at home and pave the way for future Russian destabilization and re-invasion.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is in an near-impossible position. The way to navigate it is by exposing Putin’s true intentions, presenting him with amendments – point by point – that would change this plan from a document based on trust in Kremlin’s nonexistent good faith, into one that has verification mechanisms and teeth. That means insisting on international peacekeepers and a much wider demilitarized zone. It means removing any cap on Ukrainian forces or the weapons that allies can be provided, among many other changes. If the Kremlin won’t accept them, it should be clear even to the White House that it’s being used.
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
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