What? Peace in Our Time in Ukraine?

Whad’ya mean we don’t get to dictate a settlement just because we’re the losers?

This, in a single sentence, is the position shared across the West and in Kiev. Trump’s latest sin — and this plan counts as another in many quarters — is that what he and his people now propose favors simple realities over elaborate illusions.

The Trump regime’s 28–point Ukraine peace plan accepts Moscow’s core concerns as legitimate. That’s essential for any possible settlement of the war, or the broader crisis between Russia and the West.

by Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News, November 26, 2025, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/24/patrick-lawrence-what-peace-in-our-time/

There are any number of reasons you may not like, or may even condemn, the 28–point peace plan the Trump regime has drafted to advance toward a settlement of the war in Ukraine.

You may be among those many all across the Western capitals who simply cannot accept defeat on the reasoning — is this my word? — that the West never loses anything, and it certainly cannot lose anything to “Putin’s Russia.”

You may think that President Donald Trump and those who produced this interesting document, which leaked out in the course of some days last week, have once again “caved” to the Kremlin.

The outstanding contribution in this line comes from the ever-mixed-up Tom Friedman, who argued in last Sunday’s editions of The New York Times that Trump is to be compared with Neville Chamberlain and Trump’s plan with the much-reviled British prime minister’s “appeasement” of Hitler via the Munich Agreement of September 1938.

I cannot think of a klutzier interpretation of history or a more useless comparison, given it sheds not one sliver of light on what the document to hand is about.

Or you may stand on principle and attempt the well-worn case that Ukraine is a liberal democracy — let me write that phrase again just for fun — Ukraine is a liberal democracy, altogether “just like us,” and must be defended at all costs in the name of freedom, the rights of the individual, free markets, etc.

Or you may think this is no time for the United States and its European clients to relent in their unceasing effort to destabilize the Russian Federation. Those of this persuasion cannot, of course, acknowledge that Ukraine is nothing more than a battering ram in this dreadful cause, at this point much-bloodied. This dodge tends to swell the ranks of those professing the defense of democracy against autocracy as their creed.

Anyone paying attention to the reactions to the Trump plan among the trans–Atlantic policy cliques and the media that serve them has heard all of this and more these past few days. I find it all somewhere between pitiful and amusing.

Pitiful because those who so wildly overinvested in the corrupt, Nazi-infested regime in Kiev prove incapable of acknowledging that Ukraine lost its war with Russia long ago, and this attempt to subvert Russia now proves a bust.

Amusing because those who so wildly over-invested in the corrupt, Nazi-infested regime in Kiev now squirm at the thought that the victor will have more to say about the terms of peace than the vanquished.

Whad’ya mean we don’t get to dictate a settlement just because we’re the losers?

Those asserting that the Trump plan caters to the Kremlin are not altogether wrong, to put this point another way. They are merely wrong in their objections. These 28 points, with many elaborations —No. 12 is followed by 12a, 12b, 12c and so on — indeed give Russia a lot — but not all — of what it has spent years attempting to negotiate.

The missed point is plainly stated: It is a very wise and fine thing finally to recognize the legitimacy of Russia’s perspective. At this point what will serve Russia’s interests will also serve Ukraine’s and the interests of anyone who thinks an orderly world is a good idea.

couple of things to note before briefly considering the contents of the Trump plan. I am working from a copy of the text apparently leaked to the Financial Times last Thursday.

One, it is a working document, nothing more. Trump’s people, notably Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, and Steve Witkoff, the New York property investor now serving as Trump’s special envoy, had extensive negotiations with Ukrainian and European delegations in Geneva over the weekend. These are to continue.

Trump earlier gave the Kiev regime until Thanksgiving, this Thursday, to accept or reject its terms, and he has not since said anything differently. But the Trumpster has already stated that if things are going well this deadline can be superseded. All is subjective.

Two, Rubio and Witkoff take credit for drafting this plan, reportedly in consultation with Kirill Dmitriev, the chief executive of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, who seems sometimes to serve as a diplomat close to the Kremlin. But it has Trump’s name on it, and anything with the Trumpster’s name on it is subject to radical and unpredictable revision or withdrawal at any time.

Promise of Enduring Settlement

Setting these matters aside:

There are numerous on-the-ground provisions among its 28 clauses. No. 19 specifies that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant along the Dnieper River, controlled by Russian forces since March 2022, less than a month into the war, will be restarted under the authority of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the electricity it generates will go equally to Russia and Ukraine. Russia is to allow Ukrainians to use the Dnieper “for commercial activities” (No. 23).

There is to be a prisoner swap (No. 24a) and, a family reunion program (24c). A general amnesty will extend to “all parties involved in the conflict” (No. 26). “Measures will be taken,” No. 24d states, “to alleviate the suffering of victims of the conflict.”

These clauses, boilerplate humanitarian provisions and low-hanging fruit, are worthy enough, but read to me as greeting-card niceties next to the weightier items in this plan.

There is the much-discussed, much-disputed question of territory. Crimea and the Donbas — Luhansk and Donetsk — will be recognized as Russian territory, but de facto as against de jure. Why this distinction, the Russians would be perfectly right to ask.

The land from which Ukrainian forces will be required to withdraw will be designated a demilitarized zone that belongs to Russia, but the Russians will not be permitted to enter it. Again, what is this all about? As to Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the southerly provinces Russia and Ukraine each partially control, they are to be divided and fixed at the current line of contact.

No. 22: “After agreeing on future territorial arrangements, the Russian Federation and Ukraine undertake not to change these arrangements by force.”

It is hard to say how either side will view these proposed divisions of territory. They award Moscow much of what it has demanded for some time, but in qualified fashion, and take away from Kiev much of what it has long said it will never surrender. So: Not enough for the Russians? Too much for the Ukrainians?

In my read the drafters’ intent here is to set down working language on the territory question as the basis of a lot of horse-trading. If I am correct, the U.S. side is not saying Kiev must accept or reject these terms as written so much as Kiev must agree finally to stop striking poses and do serious business at the mahogany table.

To be noted in this connection: It is long past time to dismiss all the rubbish of the past three years to the effect that Moscow’s intent has been to seize and occupy all of Ukraine. It is as ridiculous as the Europeans’ preposterous assertions — more cynical than paranoiac —that if the Russians are not stopped in Ukraine they will soon be in London and Lisbon.