Most of the peace plan for Ukraine now sketched out by the Trump administration is not new, is based on common sense, and has indeed already been tacitly accepted by Kyiv.
Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that its army has no chance in the foreseeable future of reconquering the territories now occupied by Russia. Vice President J.D. Vance’s statement that the U.S. plan would “freeze the territorial lines…close to where they are today” simply acknowledges an obvious fact.
On the other hand, by reportedly agreeing to a ceasefire along the present front line, Putin has indicated his readiness to abandon Russia’s demand that Ukraine withdraw from the parts of the provinces claimed by Russia that Ukraine still holds. This too is common sense. The Ukrainians will never agree to give those up, and, judging by the slowness of Russia’s advance to date, conquering these territories in the face of Ukrainian resistance backed by the U.S. would be a long and horribly bloody process from which Russia would gain only devastated wastelands.
Even without a U.S. veto, NATO membership for Ukraine is not realistic, both because all existing NATO members have made clear that they will not fight to defend Ukraine, and because several European countries will also veto Kyiv’s membership. Indeed, during the peace talks at the war’s outset, President Volodymyr Zelensky himself said that since all the leading NATO governments (including the Biden administration) had refused to promise NATO membership within five years, a treaty of neutrality with security guarantees was the best way for Ukraine to go.
At the same time, the Trump plan contains one big surprise: the offer to recognize Russian sovereignty over Crimea. Unlike neutrality and de facto (not de jure) acceptance of Russian control over the other territories, this really constitutes a major concession to Russia. It is not, however, as big as the Western media is suggesting, since it does not cover the other four provinces in eastern Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed.
Nor is it clear yet whether the Trump administration is simply offering formal recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea itself, or whether it — and Moscow — will also insist on Ukraine doing so, which is almost certainly politically impossible for the Zelensky government. White House press spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt has said that Trump’s offer of recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea applies only to the U.S., and that he is not demanding that Ukraine follow suit.
Given this ambiguity, it was unwise and thoughtless of Zelensky to declare immediately that “there is nothing to talk about here.” Maybe he doesn’t need to talk about it — and this kind of public rebuff is no way to retain the Trump administration’s sympathy.
There is a certain legal, moral, and historical basis for the U.S. at least to treat Crimea differently, since Crimea was only transferred from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet decree in 1954, and without any pretense of consultation with the local population. The Crimean majority vote to join Russia in 2014 also appears to have been generally credible, while the “referenda” held by Russia in the other four provinces in the middle of the war are rightly seen as wholly unreliable.
Will this plan bring peace? Russia appears close to accepting it — though at least as revealed so far, the plan does not appear to address other Russian demands, including the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine, limitations on the Ukrainian armed forces, and, above all, a bar on a European “reassurance force” in Ukraine, something on which the British, French, and other governments have been working intensively.
It is possible that the Kremlin will try to load additional and genuinely unacceptable conditions onto the peace plan (for example, radical reductions in the Ukrainian armed forces). In that case, Trump should blame Moscow for the failure of the peace process, and, while walking away from it, should also continue U.S. aid to Ukraine.