The world appears to have dodged a bullet. Donald Trump and team are walking back from their latest and most outlandish proposal for peace in Ukraine. American and Ukrainian negotiators meeting in Geneva are working to revise the plan, and U.S. and European officials have agreed to meet separately to discuss its implications for NATO and the European Union. The outcome of these talks is unknown, and it’s hard to imagine a deal that will satisfy all parties—the Russian, Ukrainian, and European positions remain starkly at odds. But whatever the result, some things are already clear—including three lessons for the U.S. and Europe.
Kyiv and its European allies have long feared that Trump would betray Ukraine by using U.S. leverage to impose an unfair, unrealistic peace settlement modeled on a real estate deal—splitting the difference between two sides, in this case, a rapacious aggressor and its much smaller neighbor struggling to defend itself. In fact, the 28-point peace plan leaked last week was far worse than that. It didn’t even pretend to split the difference. With a few minor exceptions, Moscow got everything it wanted, and Ukraine got nothing. The deal rewarded the aggressor and pummeled the victim, strengthening a voracious Russia while enriching the U.S.
But Washington wasn’t just betraying Ukraine—the proposed deal would also be disastrous for Europe. With Ukraine sidelined—its large, experienced army and cutting-edge weapons neutered—nothing would stand between Europe and Russia, now armed to the teeth, invigorated by four years of war, and openly hungry to reclaim more of what it considers its historic sphere of influence.
The American and Ukrainian negotiators who met in Geneva this weekend have reportedly made substantial changes to the original plan. Other significant issues need to be settled by direct talks between Trump and Zelensky.
But it’s hard to see Vladimir Putin agreeing to a modified plan. He has made clear for months that his position is unchangeable, and he is unlikely to accept anything less than Trump’s original outline. “If Kyiv doesn’t want to discuss the proposals,” the Russian strongman announced last week, “that’s fine with us, as it leads to achieving the goals of the special military operation by force.” In other words, back to business as usual in Ukraine, with a long, bloody winter ahead.
The original proposal, negotiated by special envoy Steve Witkoff with input from Putin’s close associate Kirill Dmitriev, mandates a long list of draconian concessions from Ukraine—ultimatums that could threaten its existence as a nation. Its armed forces would be cut by one-third, from some 900,000 troops to 600,000. Russia would be allowed to keep not just the territory it has seized over nearly 12 years of savage fighting, but also a large swathe of Ukraine it has been unable to conquer—a strategic high ground roughly the size of Delaware.
Kyiv would be required to renounce joining NATO, and NATO would have to promise to stop expanding, barring all other prospective members anywhere in the world. Russian officials would receive amnesty for their war crimes—an unmistakable signal to other aspiring aggressors in the Middle East and Asia. Western sanctions on Russia would be lifted, and Moscow would be invited to rejoin the Group of Seven advanced industrial countries.
Among the proposal’s most jarring provisions—telltale signs of Trump’s true motives—are commercial. The centerpiece of the plan, Russia’s ultimate reward, is “reintegration into the global economy,” and the principal means to this end—surprise, surprise—is a long-term “economic cooperation agreement” with the U.S. The blueprint spares no detail about what Team Trump envisions: “mutually beneficial” deals on “energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other . . . corporate opportunities.”
Meanwhile, Washington would effectively seize the nearly $300 billion in Russian assets frozen by the West shortly after the 2022 invasion—all but about $5 billion of it sitting in banks under European jurisdiction. The European Union has been negotiating a plan to leverage these assets to help Ukraine win the war and rebuild its battered cities. But the Trump plan would plow the money into American-led investment funds for Russia and Ukraine, with significant revenue flowing back to Washington. The plan also provides for the U.S. to collect a fee for any activity it undertakes to secure the peace agreement.
But even that is not the worst of it. By far the most onerous provisions of the proposal are those that pretend to guarantee the future security of Ukraine and Europe. Not only would Kyiv be severely weakened, but no NATO or other European troops would be allowed to help keep peace in Ukraine after a ceasefire. That would be left, astonishingly, to the U.S. and Russia. “A joint American-Russian working group on security issues will be established,” the document states, “to promote and ensure compliance with all provisions of this agreement.”
As for the Russian threat to Europe—a threat increasingly taken seriously by intelligence agencies across the continent—the plan says virtually nothing about it. One laughable provision, ignoring decades of treaty violations by Putin and associates, commits Russia to “enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine”—as if the law, domestic or international, means anything to Moscow. “It is expected,” another bullet point suggests meekly, “that Russia will not invade neighboring countries.”
Washington originally gave Ukraine until Thursday to approve the deal, threatening severe repercussions if Kyiv declined. The Trump administration is no longer sending weaponry to Ukraine, but it still supplies arms indirectly by selling them to Europe—and that would surely have come to an end. Even more dire for Kyiv, the U.S. could stop sharing the intelligence that has sustained Ukraine’s fighting capacity since the beginning of the war.
The U.S. provides information on incoming Russian missiles, covert activities, battlefield movements, and long-range targets deep inside enemy territory. Much of the American and European weaponry vital to Ukrainian operations would cease functioning without U.S. intelligence and software updates. Challenges would emerge immediately and worsen over time as the information provided in the past grew increasingly stale. Most troubling, unlike with most types of weaponry, there is no European substitute for what the U.S. supplies.
But even if Trump were to insist on the toughest provisions, Volodymyr Zelensky could still walk away from the deal. Even after four years of brutal war, Ukrainians are in no mood to surrender. And if it’s Putin who walks, Team Trump could pivot again—they’ve done that before. There’s no predicting, and the negotiations are likely to drag on for days.
Still, even now, three lessons stand out.
The first and most apparent is a warning to the White House. Steve Witkoff isn’t just an amateur with shockingly little knowledge of Ukraine or Russia. He’s also dangerously credulous and, after four friendly visits to Moscow, appears to be under the influence of one of the world’s shrewdest manipulators. Trump is also vulnerable to Putin’s wiles—far too vulnerable. But Witkoff is in a different league—all but taking dictation from a self-proclaimed enemy of the West. The president should rein in his special envoy or restrict his remit before his naive bumbling results in real harm to the U.S. and its allies.
The second lesson should be familiar to anyone who’s been watching the war in Ukraine. Putin will not settle for anything short of his long-standing maximalist demands. He doesn’t want peace. He doesn’t want to compromise with Kyiv. He wants total victory—the subjugation of Ukraine, the dismantling of NATO, vindication of his belief that might makes right, and that international borders are meaningless. That’s why he likes the Witkoff plan—it opens the door to almost all of that.
What Trump and Witkoff still don’t seem to grasp: even with this plan in place, Putin is unlikely to stop until he gets everything he wants—most likely through resumed aggression in Ukraine and Europe. The only way to end the conflict is to persuade him he can’t achieve his ends, no matter how long he continues fighting—and the West must stay the course until he understands he can’t win.
The third and sharpest lesson of the week is for Europe. Most continental leaders grasp the threat Witkoff put into play, and they know it goes beyond Ukraine. “Wars cannot be ended by great powers over the heads of the affected countries,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared over the weekend. “If Ukraine were to lose this war and then, most probably, collapse, that would also have consequences for the whole of European politics.”
Most European effort since the deal was leaked has focused on getting through to Trump—securing a seat at the negotiating table and modifying the plan. That may be worth trying. It’s a tactic that succeeded in the past, including in the wake of the Anchorage summit in August—and Europeans are acutely aware that neither they nor Ukraine can afford to alienate Trump completely.
But the near success of the Witkoff plan should alarm Europe, sparking a sense of urgency in Brussels and other European capitals. European leaders see the growing threat from Russia. They’ve watched with mounting fear as Moscow escalates its gray-zone attacks on NATO—sabotage, arson, assassination attempts, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns. Brussels and other capitals have been talking about a historic defense buildup since the Ukraine war began in 2022. But so far, there has been more talk—plans, promises, blueprints, and legislative proposals—than action. And time could be running out, especially if Ukraine were forced to stop fighting, leaving Europe without a shield and freeing Russia to take the next step against the West.
What the Witkoff plan revealed, and the prospect should be terrifying for Europe: Washington may be willing to let this happen. Far from standing with its NATO allies against a clear and present danger, the plan would have rewarded Russia, encouraged further aggression, and vindicated Putin’s belief that strong countries can do as they please in their spheres of influence—and Washington would have done nothing to stop him as long as Trump found a way to benefit financially.
The White House may or may not be backing down now, but the lesson should not be lost on Europe. It cannot and must not continue to rely on Washington to keep the peace. What’s needed isn’t just managing Trump’s excesses and cleaning up his mistakes, but an all-out push toward strategic autonomy, starting with an urgent defense buildup modeled on the transformation that made America the “arsenal of democracy” in the 1940s.
Will either America or its allies learn these lessons? Probably not—or not right away. Instead, Europe and the U.S. are likely to spend the coming weeks struggling to amend a plan that will in the end prove too reasonable for Putin. It won’t be the first time this has happened. We’ve seen repeatedly since Trump returned to the White House. Instead of moving decisively to counter the threat from the East—leveraging frozen Russian assets, restricting Moscow’s oil revenue, cracking down on its trading partners, and arming Ukraine to win the war—the world again gets distracted by a “plan” that’s probably going nowhere.
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