For a moment, Donald Trump seemed to have seen the light on Ukraine. After promising “severe consequences” in August if Vladimir Putin continued to obstruct ceasefire talks – but then doing nothing as Putin did just that – Trump finally on 22 October imposed significant sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, seriously compromising Putin’s ability to finance his invasion. But now, with his 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, drafted by US and Russian officials without Ukrainian or European participation, Trump has reverted to his pro-Putin norm.
Trump’s plan would reward Putin for invading Ukraine while leaving Ukraine’s democracy in jeopardy. The plan’s ringing proclamation that “Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed” rings hollow when so much of the plan compromises that sovereignty. A Kremlin dream, the plan would be a Ukrainian nightmare.
Betraying his real-estate background, Trump continues to treat the Ukrainian conflict as a mere territorial dispute, as if handing Putin a chunk of Ukrainian land will satisfy the despot. But Putin’s war is not about controlling a charred swath of deindustrialized territory in eastern Ukraine. It is about Ukraine’s democracy – and Putin’s desire to snuff it out so it no longer serves as an enticing model for the Russian people of the accountable government that Putin’s deepening dictatorship denies them.
While freezing in place the divided Ukrainian provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, Trump’s plan would force Ukraine to abandon all of Donetsk province. Beyond rewarding Russia with territory that its forces have been unable to seize in more than a decade of fighting, this surrender would leave Ukrainian defenses perilously weakened.
Donetsk is the location of Ukraine’s much-vaunted “fortress belt”, the entrenched defensive positions that are a key obstacle to Russian advances. Trump would have Ukraine abandon these defenses, leaving Putin a clear path to Kyiv should he later choose to resume the war.
Then, in a move that would make renewed fighting easier for Russia, Trump would require Ukraine to diminish the size of its armed forces from their current 800,000 to 850,000 troops to a maximum of 600,000. Trump’s plan places no such limits on Russian forces.
In an apparent sop to Putin’s efforts to portray Ukraine’s democratically elected government as a bunch of Nazis, Trump’s plan proclaims: “All Nazi ideology and activities must be rejected and prohibited.” As if to underscore the point, it insists that “Ukraine will hold elections in 100 days” of a ceasefire agreement. Trump imposes no requirement that Putin jeopardize his dictatorship by holding elections in Russia.
To be sure, the plan makes Russia promise not to “invade neighboring countries” and to “enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine”. But given that Putin has breached similar agreements in the past – the 1994 Budapest memorandum, in which Russia promised to respect Ukraine’s borders in return for giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, and the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements, in which Russia promised a ceasefire and a return of occupied territory in eastern Ukraine to Kyiv – why should we trust Putin this time?
That is why Ukraine has been so insistent on western security guarantees. The plan threatens a “decisive coordinated military response” should Russia resume its invasion, and provides that “Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees,” but the details range from fuzzy to troubling. The plan would not only deny Ukraine Nato membership but also preclude Nato members from stationing troops on Ukraine’s soil, precluding the reassurance force, presumptively led by Britain and France, on which Ukraine had been counting to prevent Putin from replenishing his diminished forces, rearming, and reinvading.
A separate side agreement reportedly would provide Ukraine with a Nato-style security guarantee, in which any future “significant, deliberate, and sustained armed attack” by Russia on Ukraine “shall be regarded as an attack threatening the peace and security of the transatlantic community.” That suggests a military response. But unlike a strong Ukrainian military – Ukraine’s most reliable defense against renewed Russian aggression – the effectiveness of the side agreement would depend on the commitment of Nato leaders, including Trump, to respond militarily to Putin’s aggression, something they have not done to date for fear of a nuclear conflagration.
To make a deterrent more credible, European leaders have long insisted on a US backstop to any peacekeeping force in Ukraine, but for now that depends on the unreliable Trump. Moreover, despite the Nato-sounding language, Trump reportedly is offering only “intelligence and logistical assistance” or “other steps judged appropriate”, not direct military assistance. That will hardly leave Putin quaking in his boots.
As if this embrace of Putin’s wishlist were not enough, Trump’s plans move toward lifting sanctions against Russia and readmitting it to the Group of 8, from which it was excluded when it forcibly seized Ukraine’s Crimea. The removal of sanctions would make it easier for Putin to rebuild his military for a possible next invasion.
One insidiously dangerous part of the plan is the amnesty it promises Russian forces for their atrocities in Ukraine. Beyond the brazen criminality of Putin’s invasion – a clear act of aggression – Russian forces have systematically targeted Ukrainian civilians and civilian infrastructure – blatant war crimes. The international criminal court (ICC) has already charged four Russian military commanders for attacking Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure. Putin himself, and his children’s rights commissioner, have been charged for kidnapping Ukrainian children. If he has his way, Trump will sweep these and future charges under the rug.
Fortunately, Trump has no such power over the ICC. The only way to deprive the ICC of jurisdiction would be through repeated annual resolutions of the UN security council. Even assuming that the United States and Russia (along with Russia’s ally, China) would support such amnesties, Britain and France, as the other veto-wielding permanent members, would have to go along, year after year.
Dangling such an amnesty is a virtual invitation to more atrocities. Trump’s offer suggests to Putin that, as ceasefire negotiations progress, he may as well continue committing atrocities because in the end, Trump will arrange to absolve him. The day after Trump’s plan became public, another Russian glide bomb hit an apartment in southern Ukraine, killing five people and injuring 10, including a teenage girl.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has understandably treated the plan as a “vision” rather than a final offer. Wary of offending Trump, who must approve continuing sales of US arms to Ukraine, Zelenskyy said he would negotiate on the basis of the plan. But to underwrite a lasting peace in Ukraine, Trump’s plan needs not a few Band-Aids but major surgery. Let’s hope that Trump hasn’t again fallen so much under Putin’s spell that he has lost the ability to see the major faults in his proposal.
Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch (1993-2022), is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs. His book, Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments, is published by Knopf and Allen Lane.
