🔗 Share this article

For a brief period, Donald Trump seemed to embrace a resolute stance on the Ukrainian conflict. Following delivering statements of "significant ramifications" last August if Russia's president carried on blocking truce talks, Trump ultimately introduced substantial restrictions on Russia's biggest petroleum corporations, these major energy companies. This action significantly affected Putin's capability to fund his military invasion in Ukraine.

Yet, via his newly presented 28-point peace plan for the conflict, reportedly developed by US and Russian diplomats lacking Ukrainian or European input, the former president has clearly gone back to his Russia-friendly approach.

Favoring Aggression

Trump's plan would effectively favor Putin for occupying a sovereign nation while putting Ukraine's democratic system in peril. Although strong statements that "Ukraine's independence will be affirmed", much of the proposal actually undermine that same sovereignty. What represents a Kremlin dream would likely be a Ukrainian nightmare.

Reflecting his business background, Trump continues to consider the Ukrainian conflict as a mere border issue, implying handing Putin a portion of Ukraine's territory will please the leader. Yet, Putin's war is not simply about dominating a destroyed swath of industrial-devastated territory in eastern Ukraine. It is about Ukraine's political system – and the Russian leader's obvious intention to destroy it so it ceases to serves as an appealing example for the Russia's population of the democratic governance that his growing autocracy prevents them.

Land Concessions

While keeping in place the presently separated oblasts of these areas, the plan would force the nation to surrender the entire this eastern territory. In addition to rewarding Russia with territory that its troops have been failed to capture in more than a lengthy period of fighting, this concession would render Ukraine's defensive positions severely weakened.

Donetsk is the place of Ukraine's highly-touted "defensive line", the entrenched defensive positions that constitute a key impediment to Russian advances. The proposal would have Ukraine leave these positions, leaving Russian forces a unobstructed path to Kyiv should he subsequently choose to renew the conflict.

Armed Forces Reductions

Then, in a action that would make future hostilities more feasible for the Russian military, the plan would require Ukraine to cut the scale of its troops from their present approximately 800,000 troops to a maximum of this lower number. Significantly, the plan imposes no similar limits on the invading army.

Apparently as a gesture to Russia's attempts to characterize Ukraine's democratically elected administration as Nazis, the plan asserts: "All Nazi belief system and actions must be condemned and prohibited." Apparently to underscore this element, it requires that "Ukraine will hold elections in this period" of a truce. At the same time, the proposal places no requirement that Putin jeopardize his dictatorship by holding votes in Russia.

Security Guarantees

Certainly, the proposal includes the Russian Federation commit not to "enter neighboring countries" and to "establish in legislation its position of non-aggression towards the EU and Ukraine". Yet considering that Putin has broken equivalent agreements in the history – including the 1994 agreement, in which the Russian government pledged to recognize the nation's borders in return for giving up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal, and the Minsk accords, in which Russia committed to a truce and a handback of occupied land in the region to Kyiv – why should the international community have confidence in Putin on this occasion?

That is why Ukraine has been so adamant on international protection assurances. Although the proposal promises a "immediate unified defense action" in case Russia resume its military campaign, and includes that "Ukraine will receive dependable defense commitments", the particulars include fuzzy to troubling. The initiative would not only deny Ukraine alliance membership but also prevent alliance nations from stationing troops on the nation's land, thereby precluding the peacekeeping contingent, reportedly commanded by the UK and France, on which Ukraine had been relying to stop Russia from restoring his reduced troops, rearming, and attacking again.

World Reaction

Another side agreement apparently would offer the nation with a Nato-style protection assurance, in which any later "serious, deliberate, and sustained aggression" by the Russian Federation on the country "would be considered as an assault endangering the tranquility of the transatlantic community." That suggests a defense action. Yet different from a powerful Ukraine's armed forces – Ukraine's primary protection against renewed hostilities – the success of the parallel accord would hinge on the dedication of Nato leaders, such as the US administration, to respond with force to Putin's aggression, an action they have {not