An end to the war in Ukraine may not be possible as long as Russia’s president is still in power.
The 28-point peace plan is now a 19-point peace plan.
President Donald Trump says the plan for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine that was presented to Kyiv last week, and was so heavily tilted toward Russia’s demands that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “one of most difficult moments in our history,” has been “fine-tuned” after talks between US and Ukrainian negotiators. The Ukrainians say the deal — which now includes more robust post-war security guarantees for Ukraine — is acceptable for them, and Zelenskyy is seeking a meeting with Trump to discuss the thorny issue of Ukraine ceding territories to Russia.
What about the Russians? Trump is dispatching his envoy Steve Witkoff to present the new plan to President Vladimir Putin. (Witkoff’s conversations with his Russian counterparts appear to have been the source of the original 28-point plan.) But the initial response from the Kremlin is not very positive. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that if the new plan differs from the “spirit and letter” of the deal Putin thought he had reached with Trump in Alaska in August, the “situation will be fundamentally different.” That understanding involved Ukraine ceding the rest of the eastern Donbas region, including areas not currently under Russian control, to Russia.
Trump appears to be hoping for a repeat of the recent Gaza ceasefire, where the US was able to strongarm Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a deal with Hamas that he wasn’t all that happy with. The importance of American weaponry and intelligence sharing to the Ukrainian war effort gives Trump leverage over Zelenskyy — that’s why the Ukrainian leader continues to engage with Washington despite the diplomatic whiplash of Trump’s frequently changed stances on the war.
But at this point, nobody seems to have leverage over Putin. Which is why the question of whether this war will end soon comes down to what terms Putin finds acceptable. This raises the depressing question of whether peace is possible at all as long as Putin is alive and in power.Why Russia would see no reason to stop now
The Ukrainians may have little choice but to continue to engage with the US-led peace negotiations, but senior officials in Kyiv are clearly not optimistic about it.
