The American news server Axios was the first to report on the new plan, citing American and Russian officials. According to him, American negotiator Steve Witkoff and Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev are working on it, among others. The plan has 28 points divided into four categories: peace in Ukraine, security guarantees, security in Europe and future US relations with Russia and Ukraine.
The AFP agency then stated that it includes, among other things, the recognition of the illegal annexation of Crimea, the transfer of occupied territories to Russia, and the reduction of the Ukrainian army to 400,000 soldiers.
Analysts from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) described these conditions as a complete capitulation of Ukraine, which will also create conditions for Russia to resume Russian aggression against Ukraine.
“The proposed peace plan would deprive Ukraine of key defensive positions and capabilities necessary to defend against future Russian aggression, apparently without any guarantees,” analysts evaluate the plan, which was approved by US President Donald Trump himself.
Unreasonable advantage for Russia
The plan envisages that the Ukrainians would withdraw from the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which the Russian occupiers do not even fully control. “That would disproportionately favor Russia,” states ISW. The Donetsk region in particular is very important for Ukraine, the attacked country has defenses in the cities that have been holding up since 2014, when the Russians started the conflict in Donbass. The American plan would give up this defense.
“Russia has been unsuccessfully trying to occupy the Ukrainian defense belt for more than a decade, and ISW continues to estimate that at the current rate of Russian progress it would probably take several years to occupy this belt,” the analysts said, adding that by handing over this territory, Ukraine would gain nothing in return, while it would save Russia time and human resources when it attacks Ukraine again in the future.
Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Donetsk region would also provide Russia with a more advantageous position for further attacks on the Kharkiv region and further east in the Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk regions.
According to ISW analysts, the American peace plan is essentially the same as the Russian demands from Istanbul in 2022, which Moscow presented to Ukraine. Since then, however, Ukraine has liberated half of the territory occupied by Russia, analysts recalled, adding that Istanbul’s demands would, among other things, permanently cut off Ukraine from NATO, from a strong army or from aid from Western countries.
