A peace plan for Ukraine: Painful, imperfect — and inevitable
The world should embrace it.
By Stephen Kinzer – Boston Globe - November 27, 2025
A new peace plan for Ukraine has emerged. President Trump has endorsed it, Russia has tentatively accepted it, and Ukraine is negotiating to soften its terms.
It has set off an explosion of protest. Critics say it goes too far in accommodating Russian interests and may even have been drafted by Russians, though Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it was authored by the United States. It is actually a long-overdue recognition of reality. It presents the best chance in years to end a horrifically destructive war. The world should embrace it.
Grinding conflict has enveloped eastern Ukraine since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Russia, with its vastly greater military power, is winning slow and steady victories at a high cost financially and in casualties. Meanwhile, much of Ukraine has been devastated as millions have been killed, maimed, or displaced.
Proud nations often fight losing wars for too long. At some point, reason sets in. If the Ukraine war continues, Europe will be further destabilized, Russia is likely to capture more Ukrainian territory, more soldiers and civilians will die, and wider war will threaten.
Although Trump’s plan is still being refined, its outlines are clear. Russia would hold some form of control, and perhaps even full sovereignty, over demilitarized Russian-speaking regions in what is now eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian army would be capped at 600,000, probably more than it could sustain in peacetime anyway. No foreign troops, other than neutral peacekeepers, would be allowed in any part of Ukraine, which would keep 80 percent of its territory and be free to join the European Union. It could import defensive weapons but — most important — it would not join the US-dominated NATO military alliance.
For President Vladimir Putin of Russia, that is the decisive point. As the former NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg put it, “He went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.” A guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO is an absolute requirement if Russia is to halt its advance.
Critics of Trump’s proposal have long argued that barring Ukraine from NATO would be succumbing to Russian pressure, and that Ukraine should be allowed to choose its own security partners. This is disingenuous. Russia wants a relationship with Ukraine like ours with Mexico and Canada: Ukraine can be independent and make its own decisions but it may not partner militarily with enemies of its big-power neighbor.
The critics are closer to the mark when they complain that Trump’s plan gives Russia much of what it wants. That is true, and there’s a reason for it: Russia is winning the war. Indignant cries that aggression must never be rewarded clash with stark battlefield realities.
To the United States and its allies, the Ukraine war never had much to do with Ukraine. It has been wildly popular in Washington because it offers a rare chance to fight, wound, and weaken Russia. Anti-Russia passion, in some ways a lingering relic of the Cold War, dictated that the fighting should go on, as then-president Joe Biden promised, “for as long as it takes.” Ukrainian men, women, and children are collateral damage in a proxy war between Washington and Moscow.
Accepting Trump’s plan could be fateful for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Far-right and ultra-nationalist forces are powerful in Kyiv. Many reject all concessions to Russia. A palace revolution could be attempted.
Zelensky may be able to negotiate changes in the plan, but if at some point Trump insists that he sign, he will have little choice. Since a pro-American regime rose to power in Ukraine in 2014, massive American aid — $187 billion in the past three years alone — has turned Ukraine into a client state. In matters of war and peace, it has little true autonomy left. Zelensky will “have to like the peace plan,” Trump told reporters last week, “and if he doesn’t like it, then you know, they should just keep fighting, I guess.”
Despite what has been repeated ad nauseum in Washington, no vital American interest is at stake in Ukraine. A neutral Ukraine and a semi-pacified Russia would be security gains for the United States, Europe, and Ukraine itself. Pouring more billions into the Ukrainian quicksand will only produce more bloodshed and a worse result in the end. In this case, ugly peace is better than permanent war.
--
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.