Analysis: Proposals are non-starter for Ukraine – but they can’t reject it entirely
By Dominic Waghorn, international affairs editor
“Terrible”, “weird”, “peculiar”, “baffling”.
These are some of the adjectives being levelled by observers at the Trump administration’s peace plan for Ukraine.
The 28-point proposal was cooked up between Trump’s negotiator Steve Witkoff and Kremlin official Kirill Dmitriev without European and Ukrainian involvement.
It effectively dresses up Russian demands as a peace proposal – demands first made by Russia at the high watermark of its invasion in 2022, before defeats forced it to retreat from much of Ukraine.
Its proposals are non-starters for Ukrainians.
It would hand over the rest of the Donbas – territory they have spent almost four years and lost tens of thousands of men defending.
Analysts estimate at the current rate of advance it would take Russia four more years to take the land it is proposing simply to give them instead.
It proposes more than halving the size of the Ukrainian military and depriving them of some of their most effective long-range weapons.
And it would bar any foreign forces acting as peacekeepers in Ukraine after any peace deal is done.
Pressuring Zelenskyy
The plan comes at an excruciating time for the Ukrainians.
They are being pounded with devastating drone attacks, killing dozens in the last few nights alone.
They are on the verge of losing a key stronghold city, Pokrovsk.
And Zelenskyy is embroiled in the gravest political crisis since the war began, with key officials facing damaging corruption allegations.
The suspicion is Witkoff and Dmitriev conspired together to choose this moment to put even more pressure on the Ukrainian president.
Perversely though, it may help him. There has been universal condemnation and outrage in Kyiv at the Witkoff-Dmitriev plan.
Rivals have little choice but to rally around the wartime Ukrainian leader as he faces such unreasonable demands.
Impact of Trump exit
The genesis of this plan is unclear.
Was it born from Donald Trump’s overinflated belief in his peacemaking abilities?
His overrated Gaza ceasefire plan attracted lavish praise from world leaders, but now seems mired in deepening difficulty.
The fear is Trump’s team are finding ways to allow him to walk away from this conflict altogether, blaming Ukrainian intransigeance for the failure of his diplomacy.
Trump has already ended financial support for Ukraine, acting as arms dealer instead, selling weapons to Europe to pass onto the invaded democracy.
If he were to take away military intelligence support too, Ukraine would be blind to the kind of attacks that in recent days have killed scores of civilians.
Europe and Ukraine cannot reject the plan entirely and risk alienating Trump.
They will play for time and hope against all the evidence he can still be persuaded to desert the Kremlin and put pressure on Putin to end the war, rather than force Ukraine to surrender instead.
