The nature of the plan and Ukraine’s impossible position
Donald Trump’s proposed 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine is not a peace plan at all. It is capitulation dressed up as diplomacy and a roadmap to Ukrainian defeat that grants Russia nearly everything it wants while demanding unilateral concessions from the victim. Nothing about this proposal creates stability. It simply rewards aggression, legitimizes territorial conquest, and dismantles Ukraine’s ability to defend itself in the future.
What is most revealing, however, is not the proposal itself, but what it exposes about the West. Much has been said and written in fresh days on the 28-point “peace plan”, and this article will not search to rehash those points. Rather, the goal is to underscore respective serious, worrying trends: the erosion of the US-European safety relationship; Europe’s stunning deficiency of strategical autonomy; and the extraordinary force now building on a Ukraine exhausted by years of war, interior political scandal, and an increasingly desperate civilian situation. Ukraine is more susceptible than it has been since early 2022, and alternatively of reinforcing the country, Washington is nudging it toward surrender, with Europe nearly powerless to help.
For context, the US-Russia plan proposed last week is fundamentally disastrous for Ukraine as it forces Kyiv to quit large parts of its territory, abandon its NATO aspirations, accept a permanently limited military, and relinquish its legal claims against Russia — all while receiving no credible guarantees that Moscow will not invade again. The plan would admit Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk as de facto Russian land and require Ukraine to retreat even from areas Russia never managed to conquer, creating a demilitarized buffer region internationally acknowledged as belonging to Moscow. It blocks Ukraine from joining NATO forever, caps its army at 600,000 troops, bans NATO forces from always being stationed in the country, and replaces real safety guarantees with vague promises no 1 can or will enforce.
Ukraine would be pressured to drop all claims for accountability or reparations for Russian atrocities, silencing victims and rewarding aggression. In exchange, Russia simply “agrees” not to invade neighbours – a meaningless assurance after 2014 and the Minsk treaties – and offers to let only 100 billion US dollars of its own frozen assets be utilized for reconstruction, something it has already condemned as theft. In sum, the plan dismantles Ukraine’s sovereignty, legitimizes Russia’s territorial conquest, strips Kyiv of long-term defence capacity, and traps the country in a position of permanent vulnerability to renewed Russian attack.
Ukrainian exhaustion, interior pressure, and western abdication
An interlocutor in Kyiv put it to me bluntly this week: “Things are worse than they have been since the invasion began. But Ukraine should not accept [this deal]. It is nothing but capitulation.” This sentiment, combining exhaustion and defiance, is widely shared across Ukrainian society, visible on Instagram and Telegram and among many with whom I have had contact.
Ukrainians desperately want peace more than anyone. But they do not want, and cannot afford, peace at any cost. They know better than anyone that Russia uses ceasefires to rebuild, rearm and strike again. They remember Bucha, Mariupol, Izium and Kherson. They remember filtration camps, deportations and torture chambers. A “peace” that cements Russian territorial gains, removes Ukraine’s deterrent capability, and leaves Kyiv exposed is not a peace worth having. It is simply the intermission before the next war: a war Ukraine would be improbable to survive.
The bitter fact is that Ukraine is being pressured into a position no country should always be forced into. This is not the consequence of Ukrainian strategical failure. It is the product of years of European strategical negligence and an American political strategy that no longer sees its own safety tied to European stability. It is the predictable consequence of Europe spending years trying to keep the United States engaged in European defence while doing almost nothing to build its own. Sadly, on this, president Donald Trump was correct.
Europe now lacks the military, industrial and political weight to counter either Russian aggression or American coercion. It cannot supply Ukraine at scale; it cannot coordinate its own defence spending; and it cannot produce adequate ammunition to sustain Ukraine’s war effort for more than a fewer weeks or months without American help. While Russia and China have understood this for years, now Washington has begun to realize it and is acting accordingly.
A Ukrainian military officer told me this week: “If Europe actually cared about Ukraine, we would not be in this position.” He is not wrong. The frontline is collapsing in multiple sectors due to the fact that Ukraine does not have the drones, shells, missiles, long-strike capabilities, or manpower to hold. Europe could have prevented this result had it built real capacity over the past decade or at least taken the war in Ukraine seriously from 2022 on. Instead, it held conferences, wrote communiqués, and formed committees.
Security guarantees from Europe or North America mean very small to Ukrainians today. Everyone remembers Trump questioning NATO Article 5, both during his election run and since he has been in the White House. Everyone saw the US struggling to pass aid packages in 2024, and we see the effects of the US turning its back on Ukraine since Trump became president: a nearly tenfold increase in the number of Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and a faltering Ukrainian defence in almost all area. We all watch as Canada and much of Europe neglect to meet even minimal NATO spending targets. Guarantees are easy to sign, but irrelevant if the guarantors deficiency the political will and military capacity to enforce them. And Ukrainians know, just as Moscow knows, that no western state will send its soldiers to die defending a Ukraine left disarmed by its own allies.
Only a strong, well-equipped Ukrainian military can deter the next Russian invasion. Not promises on paper. Not vague guarantees. Not “coalitions of the willing” that can barely supply shells. But alternatively of strengthening Ukraine’s military deterrent, the West is de facto pushing Kyiv toward accepting its dismantlement.
Compounding this force is the worsening home situation inside Ukraine. Rolling blackouts and heating shortages are now a regular reality. Over the past week, Kyivites had an average of 3 hours of electricity per 24-hour period. Winter has returned with full force, with small hope for immediate improvement. Critical infrastructure remains 1 of Russia’s primary targets, and the harm is beginning to accumulate in ways that affect not just morale but survival. Under specified conditions, Ukrainians – average civilians, the elderly, families separated for years – understandably want the war to end as shortly as possible.
Some now openly wonder about peace. 1 Kyiv resident I spoke to in fresh days explained, “I am starting to wonder if it is time for peace with Russia. But the points in this deal, they are unacceptable. They would only warrant more suffering later.”
Layered on top of this is the damaging corruption scandal surrounding president Zelenskyy and members of his circle. Regardless of which allegations hold up, the scandal has weakened Kyiv at a time erstwhile it cannot afford to appear divided or compromised. Corrupt Ukrainian officials, stealing from Ukraine erstwhile the country is almost on its knees, are just as much to blame. As a result, Moscow and Washington see a Ukrainian government distracted and politically weakened, and are now manipulating that weakness to push for concessions they would never have achieved in 2023, 2024, or earlier this year, erstwhile Ukrainian battlefield successes made capitulation unthinkable.
The cost of inaction and an urgent call for European power
In the military, the debate is even more intense. Soldiers on collapsing fronts are torn between 2 impossible choices: proceed fighting with insufficient resources or accept a “peace” that guarantees the next war will be harder, bloodier, and frankly, unwinnable. all Ukrainian officer I talk to understands the stakes, and no believe this deal will bring real peace. But they besides know the reality on the ground: they are being asked to hold the full European safety order together while their allies hesitate.
Europe must urgently realize that if Ukraine falls on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, then the continent becomes vastly little secure. Russia has demonstrated repeatedly that its strategical “red lines” are flexible to the point of parody. Each time the West hesitated, Russia threatened to escalate. Each time the West provided useful materiel for Ukraine (HIMARS, Storm Shadow, F-16s, ATACMS, etc.), Russia backed down. Moscow cannot afford a genuine escalation against NATO. Its atomic threats are a tool of manipulation, not a reflection of real intent. Ukraine’s victories in 2022 and incursion into Kursk in 2024 demonstrated this rather clearly.
The only escalation that truly threatens Europe is Ukrainian defeat.
Drone incursions into Poland were not an anomaly, but a warning. If Russia is rewarded now, its appetite will grow. Hybrid operations, cyberattacks, sabotage, and force will increasingly mark Moldova, the Baltics, Poland and Western Europe. Europe’s full east frontier is at hazard of destabilization. And the message to China could not be clearer: the post-1945 safety architecture is dead. Force works. Alliances are unreliable. The strongest can do as they please. Taiwan will be the next test, and while it is far adequate distant from Europe to not warrant the same worries, the threat to global critical infrastructure, militaries, the internet, satellite communications, and everything else that depends on Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing capabilities is at stake. Beijing is clearly watching all hesitation, all concession, and all western fracture.
Europe and Canada must respond now. Not with statements, “task forces” or symbolic press conferences, but with weapons, production capacity, and real political will. Air defence systems must be transferred immediately. Ammunition production must decision from “announced” to “delivered”. Drones must be produced in the hundreds of thousands. Long-range missiles must be supplied without caveats – including Taurus. Europe must besides face a reality it has tried for decades to avoid: the United States is no longer a dependable strategical ally. Whether through neglect or intentional abandonment, Washington is increasingly acting in ways that undermine European safety alternatively than defend it. Europe needs to show to Russia, China, and even the United States that it can, and will, act on its own.
It is time for Europe to rearm. Not just symbolically, but at scale, and now. It must build real deterrent capacity. It must become strong adequate not only to dissuade Russia and constrain China, but to withstand US unpredictability. Power respects power. And right now, Europe projects none.
If Europeans want a unchangeable continent, a sovereign Ukraine, and a functioning rules-based order, the time to act was yesterday. The second-best time is today. next day may be besides late. The crisis of the 28-point “peace plan” may pass, but Europe needs to realize present that these situations will only repeat themselves until it has credible, strategical deterrence.
What Moscow and Washington are selling as “peace” is nothing of the sort. It is simply surrender. And surrender now means catastrophe later — for Ukraine, for Europe, and for the planet that inactive depends on the thought that borders cannot be changed by force, that alliances mean something, and that democracies defend their own.
Capitulation is not peace. It is the end of deterrence. And if Europe does not decision now, it will pay the price for decades to come.
Joshua R. Kroeker is an independent investigator and founder of the boutique analytic firm Reaktion Group. He holds degrees from the University of British Columbia in Canada, Heidelberg University in Germany, and St Petersburg State University in Russia.
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