The Patriot Post® · Trump's Ukraine 'Peace' Plan Makes Russia Great Again

Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s security council, did his best to put on a brave face. “US is hearing us,” Kyiv’s lead negotiator said to reporters in Florida, where Ukrainian and American officials held four hours of talks on Sunday. “US is supporting us. US is working beside us,” he said, as if he were willing those words to be true.

Alas, they aren’t true. Under the Trump administration, the United States is not supporting Ukraine as it fights for its survival, and it is certainly not working beside those who have been valiantly defending their sovereignty against a ruthless aggressor.

There has never been much question where President Trump’s sympathies lie. From blaming Ukraine for having “started” the war to fawning endlessly over Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, from insulting President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as an incompetent and an ingrate to using his bully pulpit to reinforce the Kremlin’s talking points, Trump has left little doubt that he is drawn irresistibly to the American enemy who launched this war and indifferent to the pro-Western nation resisting it.

But now the administration’s betrayal of Ukraine has reached a shocking new extreme. The White House is pressing for a “peace” that would amount to Ukrainian surrender and a Russian victory — a Munich for our time.

That is no exaggeration, as became clear when the details of Trump’s now-infamous 28-point plan to end the war in Ukraine were leaked last month.

Under the proposal, parts of which were based on a Russian-authored document and even retain telltale “Russianisms” in the English text, Kyiv would have to cede large slices of Ukraine to the aggressor — including all of the Donbas, a region that Russia has been unable to seize in nearly four years of brutal fighting. The plan specified that Ukraine’s armed forces would be slashed by one-third, from roughly 900,000 soldiers to 600,000, with no reciprocal constraints on Russian forces. It prohibited Ukraine from ever joining NATO, and NATO would be barred from ever stationing troops on Ukrainian soil. Russia would be “expected” not to invade neighboring countries in the future — but if Moscow violated that expectation, Ukraine would be left, as The Wall Street Journal put it, “without an ironclad guarantee of protection from either the U.S. or European allies.”

Moreover, NATO — a purely defensive alliance that has never launched a war of aggression against any country — would be forbidden from admitting any new members. At a stroke, Russia would have been granted something it has sought for decades: a veto over NATO’s ability to ensure the collective security of its members, or even to decide who those members can be. The Kremlin’s territorial aggression — the largest act of land theft in Europe since World War II — would be ratified by the very nation that created NATO to deter precisely this sort of imperial revanchism.

This is what the Trump administration originally tried to present as “peace.”

No one in the administration now wants to admit ownership of this plan. Since it leaked and sparked an international outcry, Trump officials have downplayed and disclaimed the document. On Nov. 23, Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted that the plan was “a living, breathing document” subject to change and even told a group of senators that it was “not the administration’s plan.”

But the president’s own behavior belies the spin.

As recently as Nov. 22, Trump was still putting pressure on Zelensky to take the deal as is or suffer the consequences. Speaking to reporters in Washington, he said Zelensky had a stark choice: agree to the White House’s peace proposal by Thanksgiving, or “continue to fight his little heart out.”

An administration that truly sought to promote America’s interests would never pursue such a strategy. Rewarding Putin’s aggression does not enhance American strength, it corrodes it. A forced Ukrainian capitulation would not yield “peace,” it would yield a triumphant Russia, a demoralized Europe, and a crippled NATO alliance. It would embolden every adversary watching to see whether the world’s leading democracy still has the will to defend its friends or uphold the most basic norms of international order.

Far from making America great again, squeezing Ukraine to accept defeat on Putin’s terms would make America weaker and less respected. It would signal, yet again, that the United States no longer stands by its friends and no longer defends the principles that keep war at bay. Kyiv would scarcely be the first to learn that lesson. All too often, the brutal calculus of realpolitik has led American presidents to abandon or undermine friends ranging from the government of South Vietnam to the Kurdish resistance in Iraq to the women and girls of Afghanistan — grim reminders of the old maxim that it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but fatal to be its friend. A Russian victory would not end the danger to American interests, it would multiply it. Putin would not stop at Ukraine, nor would others who take their cues from him.

An America that abandons a democracy fighting for its life is an America inviting a more violent world. That is not how great nations behave, and it is certainly not how they remain great.