To state the obvious: President Donald Trump and his negotiating team view stopping the Ukraine war as a business deal. Because Ukraine is in trouble militarily and politically, they think President Volodymyr Zelensky should “sell” — by making a quick pact with Russia to spare his military more casualties and perhaps save his presidency from scandal.
That’s the transactional logic motivating Trump and his envoy, fellow real estate investor Steve Witkoff, as they push a 28-point plan to end almost four years of brutal fighting: Make the deal quickly, before the terms get any worse. In this rush to “yes,” the future stability of Europe is secondary. This is realpolitik on steroids.
Here’s the bottom line up front, as business executives like to say. Making peace in Ukraine is a noble pursuit, especially now. But Trump will live in infamy if he tries to force Ukraine to sell its sovereignty — its lifeblood, quite literally — to suit what he sees as America’s interests. Russian President Vladimir Putin began this catastrophic war. He should pay a price to settle it.
To get the package it wants, the White House team is using classic deal-closing techniques — with Trump setting a Thanksgiving deadline and administration officials warning that the U.S. may, in effect, pull its backing from the Ukrainian venture if it doesn’t sell now.
Witkoff’s key interlocutors in this hurry-up negotiation are business-minded, too: Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s secretary for national security, is a former private equity investor. Kirill Dmitriev is the head of Russia’s public investment fund and a savvy, U.S.-educated adviser to Putin.
Theoretically, Trump’s proposed framework might allow Ukraine to emulate South Korea, giving up territory after an armistice but prospering behind a secure line of control. The big difference is that, to keep that peace, U.S. troops have been based in South Korea for decades. The Ukraine deal has the opposite formula. It bans foreign troops, cuts the size of Ukraine’s army by about a third — and lasts only 10 years. A Korea-style deal would contain far better security guarantees.
European leaders are following Zelensky’s initial line that he wants to work with Trump for peace. They’re wary of challenging him directly — and, in truth, they’re just starting to analyze the proposed terms. They’re upset that they were bypassed by Trump’s negotiators, who view them as quarrelsome and prone to delay. But most are following the wait-and-see approach voiced Friday by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who said, “Ukraine must determine its future.”
One reason Trump is pushing so hard now is that Ukraine is in political turmoil, with Zelensky near his weakest point taking office in 2019. He’s struggling with a corruption scandal involving alleged kickbacks on equipment bought by its state-owned nuclear energy company, Energoatom, paid to a group that included Tymur Mindich, described by the Ukrainian press as a “close associate” of Zelensky. At least people have been arrested in the widening scandal, and the justice and energy ministers have been fired.
Beneath Zelensky, there’s a swirling battle for influence. Kyrylo Budanov, the charismatic chief of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence service, is a rising political rival. He’s lining up Ukrainian and Western backers for a presidential bid, Ukraine insiders tell me. They say a major political shake-up may be ahead, as Zelensky tries to protect his flank. There’s speculation that Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, the popular former military commander whom Zelensky fired and sent to London as ambassador, will come home soon.
Let’s unpack Trump’s plan and a draft “security assurance framework” that accompanies it. Trump may want an agreement by Turkey Day, but this must be a negotiation, not a take-it-or-leave it diktat.
The most urgent amendment needed is an enforceable ban on Russia’s covert war against NATO. The United States should join its allies in demanding that if this hybrid war doesn’t stop, NATO will have no choice but to retaliate.
The status of Donetsk, a critical battleground in the war, is among the toughest negotiating issues. Trump’s plan proposes that Kyiv cede the roughly 25 percent of the region it now holds to become “a neutral demilitarized zone” from which Russian troops would be banned.
The region has seen some of the war’s bloodiest fighting, with many tens of thousands of Russian and Ukrainian dead. Russia keeps pushing troops into the Donetsk meatgrinder, and they have nearly captured the strategic city of Pokrovsk. Trump’s negotiators have told the Ukrainians that they are likely to lose Donetsk in any event and should make a deal now to stop the carnage.
Putin began this war hoping to neuter Ukraine’s sovereignty and halt its move toward Europe, and the Trump peace deal would give him only partial success in that. Ukraine would be eligible for European Union membership, and it would get “preferential access to the European market” in the meantime. Ukraine would have to forswear NATO membership, but it would get what the proposed security framework calls “security assurance modeled on the principles of Article 5” of the NATO treaty.
Ukraine would get help in postwar reconstruction, partly from $100 billion in frozen Russian assets that would be invested in Ukraine (with the United States, bizarrely, getting 50 percent of the profits). A Ukraine Development Fund, financed in part by the World Bank, would invest in high-tech industries. Putin would get amnesty for his alleged war crimes. But Ukrainians would get postwar amnesty, too, which might prove useful for Zelensky if the corruption scandal widens.
What of this war’s awful cost? Russia has suffered more than 1 million dead and wounded in Ukraine, according to British intelligence estimates. Russians who have watched their nation bleed for Putin’s obsessive belief in the “oneness” of Russia and Ukraine might well ask: Was this worth fighting and dying for?
As Ukraine and its European allies press to amend Trump’s plan, they should focus on preserving what Ukraine has won through its valor. It drove Russian troops back from the gates of Kyiv. It stood fast against aggression. Trump shouldn’t give Russia a victory it couldn’t achieve on the battlefield.
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