Neither the original nor the revised plan will be accepted by Ukraine, although they probably cannot reject them completely
The amendments to the peace plan devised by Kirill Dmitriev and Steve Witkoff, representing presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald J. Trump respectively, provided a European context to a flawed document, but hardly improved the original. The earlier version with 28 points, almost certainly drawn up in Moscow and presented to the American side as the basis for discussion, signalled an attempt to end the war by agreeing to practically all of Russia’s demands.
Thus, it would have forced Ukraine to give up all the territories currently occupied by Russia, and some that are not, bannedUkraine from any possibility of entry into NATO, limited its army to 600,000 troops, banned all Nazi ideology, introduced an amnesty for all war crimes, and prohibited NATO from stationing troops on Ukrainian territory.
Numerous Western analysts have lambasted the draft plan, including Anne Applebaum, Tim Ash, Rajan Menon, and Timothy Snyder, while some of the more notable pro-Kremlin writers like Anatol Lieven and optimistic members of the Trump administration led by Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio expressed optimism that the plan was feasible.
The Ukrainians met in Geneva with the Americans, British, French, and Germans, and the Europeans reduced the plan to 19 points, omitting some of the more obvious Moscow demands such as the handover of the entire Donbas region without any provisos, removing the amnesty for war crimes and the ban on Nazi ideology, and adding Ukraine’s right to choose whether it wishes to integrate with the EU or NATO, while noting that the latter cannot be achieved without the approval of all NATO members, which it does not have and is unlikely to have in the near future.
Concerning NATO troops on Ukrainian territory, the Europeans modified the original plan to assert that the defensive alliance should not have any permanent stationing in its troops during peacetime and in theory individual countries could set up their own bases.
The size of the Ukrainian army in the new plan would be limited to 800,000 and no limits should be imposed on Ukrainian long-range missiles and drones.
As the revised plan does not deal with questions of territory, it is not really a plan at all, but rather a proposal.
Neither the original plan nor the revised one will be appealing to the Ukrainians, though likely they cannot dismiss them out of hand given their need for political and military support from the United States and the Europeans.
There is no clear indicator of what security guarantees Ukraine would have if it accepted the revised plan. President Zelensky has stated several times that the loss of territory or limits to the size of the Ukrainian army are “red lines” that cannot be crossed. Arguably, the country has little chance of regaining its occupied lands without intervention from outside or a victory over Russia.
And neither draft provides much agency to Ukraine, a country that has been fighting Russian invaders for almost twelve years
It is difficult to see, conversely, what incentive there is for Putin and his Security Council to accept the European plan. Though Russia has suffered heavy losses during the 2022-25 war and gained a relatively meagre amount of territory, it has occupied a substantial portion of Ukraine in which it is deeply entrenched.
The Russians know also that they can play along with the naive and gullible Donald Trump, who is openly desperate to achieve a peace agreement to solidify his image as a world peacemaker. The American president is prepared to accept practically any conditions—including the wholesale loss of the Ukrainian territories—to bring Putin and Zelensky to the table to sign an agreement.
Trump has given way to Putin every time the two have talked, and in turn has supported or browbeaten Zelensky during their many meetings, with so many changes of opinion that the Ukrainian—as the rest of the world—have little idea where Trump stands from one day to the next.
Moreover, as his emissaries, Trump has selected close associates like Witkoff or Keith Kellogg, senior wealthy businessmen who have little knowledge of Ukrainian history, culture, and in Witkoff’s case at least, have never set foot in the country. Neither is equipped to deal with an adversary like today’s Russia—assuming of course that they consider that country in such a light.
Putin, on the other hand, has as his representative Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, but also a man born in Kyiv, whose parents still live there, and who was educated, inter alia, at Harvard and Stanford Universities. He is unsurprisingly shunned in contemporary Ukraine but clearly has far more knowledge of the country than his American counterparts.
As for the European and UK leaders, they have given undeserved credibility to the 28-point plan by taking it as their starting point for discussion rather than consigning it to the oblivion that it deserves, a craven and low bow to the great leader of the Kremlin, and the abandonment of recognition of the borders of Ukraine that at least two of the countries—Britain and France—guaranteed in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994.
Britain, France, and the United States are now suffering the consequences of abandoning a country they agreed to defend (along with Russia it should not be forgotten). In turn, Russia, a medium power with nuclear weapons, will continue the war until the fall of Ukraine, the goal that has been sought from the outset.