Peace plan proposals appear in italics. My analysis appears in plaintext.
The peace plan appears to be confused amalgam of two contradictory peace plans: The European and Ukrainian peace plan that Russia accept defeat and humiliation, and the Russian peace plan that the Ukraine gives up the Donbas for a hundred day truce during which it will hold free and fair elections, electing a government that will likely be a peace government willing to give Russia everything it has been asking for since 2014, and if it does not, Russia resumes the war, and either gets a neutral buffer state on its borders, or a howling wilderness, as the case may be.
It seems that Trump, faced with contradictory demands for military victory over Russia, and settling the war by accepting Russian victory, agreed with both of them.
1. Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.
This contradicts the prohibition of Nazism (point 20), the prohibition of the suppression of the Russian plurality that won the last genuinely free election in Ukraine (also point 20), the prohibition of Nato membership (points 3, 7, and 8), the limitation on the size of Ukraine’s military forces (point 6), and the prohibition of nukes (point 18)
2. A comprehensive, non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine and Europe. All ambiguities of the last 30 years will be considered settled.
Huh? And what is that settlement to be?
3. It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and NATO will not expand further.
4. A dialogue will be held between Russia and NATO, mediated by the US, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation to ensure global security and increase opportunities for cooperation and future economic development.
Huh? This is just the similarly undefined point 2.
5. Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees.
Huh? Does Nato commit to counter invade if Ukraine invaded? But that would be Nato membership, contradicting points 3, 7, and 8.
6. The size of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will be limited to 600,000 personnel.
Does anyone, even the Ukrainians, know the current size of the Ukrainian armed forces? It looks to me that after having conscripted about one and half million men, they have about three hundred thousand left. Six hundred thousand would give them numbers roughly equal to current Russian forces currently in the Ukraine, and it is obvious that they have far fewer than the Russians. So a limit of six hundred thousand would enable them to rebuild their forces, which is unlikely to be acceptable to Russia, which has applied a lot of blood and treasure towards maiming or killing every military aged male Ukrainian and destroying all Nato military stockpiles.
7. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.
8. NATO agrees not to station troops in Ukraine.
9. European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.
Is that perhaps the military guarantee? But that contradicts point three, Nato agrees not to expand further.
10. The US security guarantee will have the following caveats:
The US will receive compensation for the guarantee;
If Ukraine invades Russia, it will lose the guarantee;
If Russia invades Ukraine, in addition to a decisive coordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated, recognition of the new territory and all other benefits of this deal will be revoked;
If Ukraine launches a missile at Moscow or Saint Petersburg without cause, the security guarantee will be deemed invalid.
11. Ukraine is eligible for European Union (EU) membership and will receive short-term preferential access to the EU market while this issue is being considered.
“a decisive coordinated military response” is precisely what did not happen when Russia invaded, and if it did not happen then, when the Ukraine had the largest army in Europe, it is not going to happen now that Ukraine’s army and Nato military resources have been chewed up. Further, the promise of such collective military action is precisely the Nato membership that points 3, 7, and 8 prohibit.
12. A powerful global package of measures will be provided to rebuild Ukraine, including but not limited to:
The creation of a Ukraine Development Fund to invest in fast-growing industries, including technology, data centres and artificial intelligence.
The US will cooperate with Ukraine to jointly rebuild, develop, modernise and operate Ukraine’s gas infrastructure, including pipelines and storage facilities.
Joint efforts to rehabilitate war-affected areas for the restoration, reconstruction and modernisation of cities and residential areas.
Infrastructure development.
Extraction of minerals and natural resources.
The World Bank will develop a special financing package to accelerate these efforts.
Note that the money to build defence lines was largely embezzled, so the reconstruction money is likely to suffer a similar fate.
13. Russia will be reintegrated into the global economy:
The lifting of sanctions will be discussed and agreed upon in stages and on a case-by-case basis.
The US will enter into a long-term economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centres, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities.
Russia will be invited to rejoin the G8.
This seems unlikely to be acceptable to Russia.
If sanctions are continued in part, that means the west has further demands, contradicting point 2, which demands are likely to lead to a resumption of the war, but with Nato weapons stockpiles rebuilt. Russia wants to settle the war, not give the enemy a break to recover.
14. Frozen funds will be used as follows:
$100bn in frozen Russian assets will be invested in US-led efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine;
The US will receive 50 percent of the profits from this venture. Europe will add $100bn to increase the amount of investment available for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Frozen European funds will be unfrozen. The remainder of the frozen Russian funds will be invested in a separate US-Russian investment vehicle that will implement joint projects in specific areas. This fund will be aimed at strengthening relations and increasing common interests to create a strong incentive not to return to conflict.
This seems unlikely to be acceptable to Russia.
15. A joint American-Russian working group on security issues will be established to promote and ensure compliance with all provisions of this agreement.
16. Russia will enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine.
17. The US and Russia will agree to extend the validity of treaties on the non-proliferation and control of nuclear weapons, including the START I Treaty.
18. Ukraine agrees to be a non-nuclear state in accordance with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
19. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant will be launched under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the electricity produced will be distributed equally between Russia and Ukraine, 50:50.
This seems unlikely to be acceptable to Russia. They are winning, why give up anything they now control? Plus the International Atomic Energy Agency is a hostile party, likely to be interpreted as a nuclear threat.
20. Both countries undertake to implement educational programmes in schools and society aimed at promoting understanding and tolerance of different cultures and eliminating racism and prejudice:
Ukraine will adopt EU rules on religious tolerance and the protection of linguistic minorities.
Both countries will agree to abolish all discriminatory measures and guarantee the rights of Ukrainian and Russian media and education.
All Nazi ideology and activities must be rejected and prohibited.
The EU rules do not seem to have been protection for Russians in EU countries adjacent to Russia, any more than they have been protection for whites and males. Just have they have been interpreted to mean that straight males should be liberated from being straight, and Christians should be liberated from being Christian, they have been interpreted to mean that Russians should be liberated from being Russian.
21. Territories:
Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognised as de facto Russian, including by the US.
Kherson and Zaporizhia will be frozen along the line of contact, which will mean de facto recognition along the line of contact.
Russia will relinquish other agreed territories it controls outside the five regions.
Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk oblast that they currently control, and this withdrawal zone will be considered a neutral demilitarised buffer zone, internationally recognised as territory belonging to the Russian Federation. Russian forces will not enter this demilitarised zone.
Russia wants the war ended, not frozen, to be reheated once new armies have been recruited and weapons stockpiles rebuilt.
22. After agreeing on future territorial arrangements, both the Russian Federation and Ukraine undertake not to change these arrangements by force. Any security guarantees will not apply in the event of a breach of this commitment.
This sounds like the Russian peace plan: A new Ukrainian government gets elected, then they agree on new territorial arrangements, for actual, not “de-facto”, boundaries, and if they do not agree, Russia resumes the war on its time table, rather than Europe’s and America’s.
23. Russia will not prevent Ukraine from using the Dnipro River for commercial activities, and agreements will be reached on the free transport of grain across the Black Sea.
This seems to envisage a boundary on the Dnipro, which is unlikely to be acceptable to Russia.
24. A humanitarian committee will be established to resolve outstanding issues:
All remaining prisoners and bodies will be exchanged on an “all for all” basis.
All civilian detainees and hostages will be returned, including children.
A family reunification programme will be implemented.
Measures will be taken to alleviate the suffering of the victims of the conflict.
It is unlikely that Russia will agree to exchange of prisoners on an all for all basis until the conflict is actually settled, not mere “de-facto” boundaries.
25. Ukraine will hold elections in 100 days.
This sounds like the Russian peace plan — except that it fails to specify an election in which a pro Russian and/or pro peace party, similar to that which won the last genuinely free election, can exist without its members, activists, and campaigners being tortured and murdered.
26. All parties involved in this conflict will receive full amnesty for their actions during the war and agree not to make any claims or consider any complaints in the future.
27. This agreement will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by the Peace Council, headed by President Donald J Trump. Sanctions will be imposed for violations.
When one says an agreement is “legally binding”, one normally states a court or jurisdiction that will resolve issues of interpretation. But no such court exists nor can exist for Ultima Ratio Regum. This is language characteristic of a commercial deal — Trump’s field of expertise, not of a peace settlement. It looks like Trump sidelined the diplomats, who are his enemies and who want forever war. America lacks a diplomatic corps capable of doing the primary job of diplomacy — avoiding war. They are all swamp critters. This document shows the lack of their expertise, but what can you do when the experts are all enemies?
The vagueness and gross contradictions of this agreement has to be settled by the parties. There is no court that can subsequently sort things out.
28. Once all parties agree to this memorandum, the ceasefire will take effect immediately after both sides retreat to the agreed points to begin implementation of the agreement.
Huh? “both sides retreat”? Russia’s demand is that the Ukrainians retreat, while they still have a little of their army still around.
Surely by this point Putin has told Trump in private that he needs to take care of business at home. That’s the most important thing they can possibly talk about, even more than the Ukraine, because it’s necessary to solve the Ukraine problem.
Using a different email as the one I’ve been using for years was rather guessable.
I’ve also been thinking for the past few years that I should give the Jews a lot of credit and as a result have been reading Torah and am finding a new path in life via that book ever since.
Thank you for putting this together.
(Let me guess, you had to LOOK for these 28 Points, didn’t you? They weren’t just printed straight-up in the New York Times, were they? And why the fuck NOT, I wonder.)
But also, how does one sign a complicated contract with a bag full of snakes?
“This is retarded, and none of you are serious anyway. We’ll just win instead. It’s faster.” –Vlad
Or rather, is the point that there’s no way for Russia to “win in Ukraine”, ackshully, because doing that will just bait an endless guerilla war with NATO via Poland and the Baltics, that leads to nukes eventually?
This is why I’m all for re-starting nuclear testing, so that we can find out whose nukes actually work. Hopefully the American nukes are duds, while the Russian and/or Chinese ones work, so that the war can be finally over, and everyone will know and agree WHY it’s over.
Finding out my taxes pay for a 100 acre Somali farm in Maine
https://x.com/Oilfield_Rando/status/1993345008813171094
(comments…)
That moment you realize that Overthrow of the Political Class was never really so Absurd at all, that the meme of not doing so was their PsyOp to keep them in Power over you, that Revolution has in fact been Ordained as the Natural, Proper, and Only way things have ever worked in all of World History, and that it is now, once again, Necessary.
Only the top minds can successfully pull off a Revolution.
And if they are willing, it will be achieved.
Generally:
Sometimes it is, supposedly, not entirely clear who the Sovereign is, even to his own subjects. Thus it is necessary to know who the King is, and dispel any ambiguities. NRx advocates Formalism for a reason. As the Final Arbiter or Final Boss, need not be all too cruel, but should possess coercive measures to impose his will on any recalcitrant elements. And sometimes needs to apply those measures, using discretion.
Looks like a bit of US maximalism to be honest. Perhaps Trump thinks Putin is tired of winning?
Trump would have to be utterly delusional to hold any such thoughts. Which happens when one fails to recognize that reality is real. Those who recognize the facts on the ground, the direction where things are going, will surely not afford any US Maximalism.
Not a good start. Client states are fundamentally not sovereign; they always fall under someone’s, usually an Empire’s sphere of influence. Ukraine is not sovereign – it can be aligned with America or with Russia, but certainly not with itself. To believe otherwise is to believe in fairy tales. This needs to be settled once and for all, and hopefully soon will be.
Haven’t really been following this conflict all too closely, to be honest. What is obvious to me is that, should dialog fail to resolve the conflict peacefully, nukes might very well fly, and everyone should want to avoid that. The party that is gradually losing on the battlefield is the one that needs to capitulate; that is the smartest thing to do, generally speaking.
Makes sense. FAFO, as they say. The more valuable an asset it, the more resources are invested in conquering it, or destroying it. There is always a price to be paid.
The best way to maintain and uphold peace is to settle questions of Sovereignty once and for a lifetime. When Sovereignty is disputed, trouble is apt to ensue. Generally speaking, the winning party sets the conditions of settlement.
If that is indeed the case, that demonstrates that Nato is rather incompetent and untrustworthy. Who’d ever want to be a member of such an organization? Only an irrational fool, like that hubristic egomaniac Zelensky.
If that is so, Russia is in the right. If Ukraine is rightfully Russia’s, then it should not waver and look to switch allegiances, go rogue, seek independence, and such.
100%.
Yeah, as my own Russian-speaking grandpa (a very reasonable, moderate man) used to say, when a country doesn’t have clear borders, only trouble is apt to ensue. “This far, and no further” is a good rule everywhere.
That’s a problem. If the Peace Party are the Real Christians, which they are, need to be safe. Currently they are out of power, but presumably one who is familiar with the topic can come up with ways to ensure that they do get in power, and stay there.
Wherefore Ukraine needs to come to its senses real quick! And sit down with Russia and reach an agreement acceptable to both parties, acknowledging the overwhelming power imbalance involved here.
Adding more commentary here:
The party that is apt to be vaporized in nuclear hellfire ought to agree to whatever conditions can prevent that. Certainly, Zelensky’s overwhelming hubris has done nothing but hinder a final, permanent agreement. Ukraine needs to capitulate unconditionally, in my view.
If Russia is in fact on its way to victory, and looks like it is, then there’s just no symmetry. Russia is the final arbiter here, and Nato has been proven to be retarded niggers, as has long been suspected.
Nah, the US is clearly biased towards Nato. I think the Russia and Ukraine should permanently solve the issue without involving others. That’s what serious countries do.
If Ukraine is about to be annihilated by Russia, as this blog has long maintained, then the best strategy for Ukraine is to surrender unconditionally to Russia, and become a permanent clinent of Russia.
That doesn’t quite sound like unconditional surrender to me. Avoiding nuclear destruction should be top priority, particularly that is to the Ukrainians. Zelensky don’ goof’d.
That is preparation for the very conflict that that needs to be resolved. Nope.
Avoiding nuclear annihilation is still the number one priority, regardless.
100%.
Generally speaking, any condition that is unacceptable to Russia, will not be accepted. Russia is no paper tiger – it’s a very big bear.
The winning side, Russia in this case, is under no obligation to conform to the losing side’s (Ukraine’s) demands.
These critters are utterly incompetent, and always have been, despite whatever capeshit nonsense they tell themselves.
Absolutely.
Russia is winning here, so its demands are perfectly reasonable in context.