Emergency responders retrieve the bodies of residents killed when a Russian missile hit an apartment building on Wednesday.Thomas Peter/Reuters
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky faces a fraught, historic choice in the form of a 28-point peace plan proposed by the United States and Russia: He can accept a deal that looks to many Ukrainians like surrender, or he and his country can continue to fight a war they are slowly losing.
Expect Mr. Zelensky and his country to do the latter, even in the face of U.S. President Donald Trump’s reported threat to cut the flow of U.S. weapons and intelligence to Ukraine if Kyiv doesn’t accept the peace plan. If Mr. Zelensky unexpectedly bows to the pressure, expect Ukrainians to take to the streets – as they have so often done – to force him from office.
Mr. Zelensky acknowledged Friday that the almost four-year-old war for his country had reached a potentially decisive moment.
“This is one of the most difficult moments in our history,” he said in a video address. “Ukraine may now face a very difficult choice: either losing its dignity or the risk of losing a key partner.”
Zelensky says Ukraine risks losing ‘key partner’ with proposed U.S. peace plan
He was speaking hours after the 28 points of the peace proposal were finally made public. It’s now clear that the plan – formulated by Mr. Trump’s personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Kirill Dmitriev, a businessman close to Russian President Vladimir Putin – has much in common with the surrender terms Mr. Putin offered to Mr. Zelensky almost four years ago, at the start of the Russian invasion.
Kyiv would concede territory, agree to a cap on the size of its military and promise to never join NATO. Russia would get U.S. recognition of its hold on the occupied Ukrainian regions of Crimea and Donbas and an end to international sanctions. It would even get to rejoin the G7, which would again become the G8.
There’s also a clause that says all parties will receive “full amnesty for their actions during the war” – though it’s unclear how or why the International Criminal Court would drop its warrant for Mr. Putin’s arrest on war crimes charges.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday he would not betray Ukraine's interests in a U.S.-led peace process, warning that Kyiv faces a choice between losing a key partner and its national dignity at one of the most perilous moments in its history.
Reuters
The proposal calls for a family reunification plan and says all civilian detainees will be returned, including children, but there are no details on how or when tens of thousands of Ukrainian children who have been kidnapped and forcibly taken to Russia would be transported home.
“Ukraine’s national interest must be taken into account,” Mr. Zelensky said in his video address, adding that he would continue talks with the U.S. and other partners.
In an interview with Fox News Radio on Friday, Mr. Trump said Mr. Zelensky had until Thursday to respond, though an extension was possible to finalize terms.
Members of a Ternopil Catholic choir sing a prayer song in front of an apartment building destroyed in a deadly Russian missile hit on Wednesday, Nov. 21.Thomas Peter/Reuters
The Kremlin’s line Friday was that there is nothing to discuss. “The Russian military’s effective work should convince Zelensky and his regime that it’s better to strike a deal and do it now,” Mr. Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Friday.
The Witkoff-Dmitriev proposal has the same take-this-or-face-destruction tone that marked the ceasefire deal Mr. Witkoff successfully negotiated between Israel and Hamas. It even includes another “peace council” – to be headed by the Nobel Peace Prize-seeking Mr. Trump, of course – that is supposed to monitor and guarantee the end of the war.
The difference, of course, is that Ukraine is not Gaza – the war is not yet lost. Yes, tens of thousands of Ukrainians have died, and entire cities lie in ruins. The Ukrainian military is also facing a front-line situation that looks as bad as any time since the early weeks of the war. The fall of two key cities – Pokrovsk and Kupyansk – seems imminent.
That’s the bad news. The flipside is that the Russian capture of Pokrovsk and Kupyansk was predicted more than a year ago. The fact that it has taken the mighty Russian army 15 months to capture those two relatively minor centres highlights how much better Ukraine’s position is now compared with February and March of 2022, when Russian tanks were on the outskirts of Kyiv and Kharkiv.
Here’s what’s in the U.S. 28-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine
If Mr. Zelensky didn’t accept Moscow’s surrender terms then, why would he now, when the Russian army is hundreds of kilometres further from Kyiv and Ukraine has the full backing of Europe and Canada to continue the fight?
The territorial concessions – which would see Ukraine withdrawing from the rest of the Donbas region and Russia keeping what it holds in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, plus Crimea – are what have been grabbing headlines ever since the existence of the peace proposal was first reported by Axios this week . But as malodorous as those losses would be, the other parts of the 28-point plan would be even harder for Ukrainians to swallow.
In addition to giving up the “fortress cities” of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk – fortified Donbas population centres that Russia has been trying and failing to capture since 2014 – the deal reportedly also calls for Ukraine’s military to be capped at 600,000 troops, down from the current 900,000. In other words, Ukraine would be unable to match a renewed Russian military buildup and ill-suited to defend itself if and when the Witkoff-Dmitriev “peace” collapses and Russia resumes its march toward Kyiv.
A bus drives past an apartment building was destroyed by a Russian missile in Kramatorsk in September. The U.S. peace plan for Ukraine would see Kyiv give up the ‘fortress cities’ of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.Thomas Peter/Reuters
And that’s what many Ukrainians believe would happen if Mr. Zelensky were to accept this kind of deal. Mr. Putin would take his gains, rebuild his military and attack again.
That’s exactly what happened after Ukraine signed the Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015, which froze the proxy war between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed fighters in the Donbas region along its front lines. Seven years later, Mr. Putin attacked again, with more force than ever.
Other vague clauses appear to suggest that Ukraine would be forced to lift restrictions on Russian television channels, as well as the Russian Orthodox Church – both long-time tools of Kremlin influence .
Meanwhile, the weakly worded assurance that “Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees” from the U.S. will mean little to Ukrainians who remember well the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which saw Ukraine give up its Soviet era nuclear arsenal in exchange for promises from Russia, the U.S. and Britain. Signing that deal proved to be a historic mistake for Kyiv.
Ukraine corruption scandal is rattling the West’s confidence in Zelensky’s government
In many ways, the 28-point deal is little different from what Mr. Trump was trying to force Mr. Zelensky to accept during their televised clash in the White House back in February. Mr. Zelensky held his ground then and later briefly seemed to flip the mercurial Mr. Trump to Ukraine’s side as the U.S. President took to blaming Mr. Putin for refusing to end the war.
Now, Mr. Trump appears to have reverted to accepting the Kremlin’s narrative about how the war should end.
The wild card, this time, is that Mr. Zelensky has been weakened by the worst scandal of his six-year presidency: a US$100-million corruption scheme that appears to reach right into Mr. Zelensky’s inner circle of friends and business associates.
The fear in Kyiv is that Mr. Zelensky’s political troubles will push him to accept a deal that’s terminally dangerous for the future of the country. If that happens, Ukrainians – civil society, as well as the hundreds of thousands of military veterans – will ask: What was all that death and suffering for?
With a report from the Associated Press