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Initially, Trump gave the impression to embrace a firm approach regarding the Ukrainian conflict. Following making statements of "serious ramifications" during the summer if Putin persisted hindering ceasefire negotiations, the former president ultimately imposed substantial restrictions on the Russian biggest energy firms, Rosneft and Lukoil. This move significantly affected the Russian leader's capability to finance his aggression in the region.

However, with his latest comprehensive peace plan for the conflict, reportedly developed by both nations' officials excluding Ukraine's or European involvement, he has clearly gone back to his Russia-friendly stance.

Favoring Aggression

The former president's plan would essentially reward Putin for invading a sovereign nation while leaving the country's democratic system in peril. Despite bold statements that "Ukraine's sovereignty will be affirmed", much of the proposal effectively weaken that essential sovereignty. Seen as a Moscow's wish would likely be a Ukrainian nightmare.

Showing his corporate past, the former president continues to consider the situation in Ukraine as a basic land disagreement, implying ceding Russia a section of Ukraine's territory will please the ruler. However, Russia's military campaign is not merely about controlling a damaged region of industrial-devastated area in eastern Ukraine. It is about Ukraine's political system – and the Russian leader's apparent desire to eliminate it so it no longer serves as an attractive standard for the Russian people of the accountable leadership that his growing autocracy denies them.

Border Giveaways

While keeping in status the already separated regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, Trump's initiative would force the nation to give up the entire Donetsk province. Beyond rewarding the Russian Federation with land that its troops have been unable to capture in more than a ten years of fighting, this concession would make Ukrainian defensive positions dangerously compromised.

Donetsk is the place of Ukraine's much-vaunted "defensive line", the entrenched defensive positions that are a essential obstacle to Russian advances. Trump would have Ukraine leave these fortifications, providing Putin a open way to the capital in case he subsequently decide to restart the war.

Armed Forces Limitations

Then, in a move that would enable renewed fighting more feasible for Russia, Trump would force the nation to cut the size of its armed forces from their present large number personnel to a limit of this lower number. Importantly, the plan imposes no similar restrictions on Russian forces.

Apparently as a gesture to Putin's attempts to characterize the nation's democratically elected government as Nazis, Trump's proposal states: "Any extremist doctrine and practices must be opposed and forbidden." As if to underscore this point, it requires that "Ukraine will hold democratic votes in this period" of a truce. At the same time, Trump sets no condition that the Russian leader jeopardize his regime by conducting votes in his own country.

Defense Commitments

Certainly, the proposal includes Russia promise not to "invade bordering nations" and to "incorporate in law its policy of peaceful relations towards European nations and the Ukrainian people". However taking into account that the Russian leadership has broken comparable agreements in the history – including the Budapest accord, in which the Russian government promised to honor the nation's territorial integrity in return for giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, and the previous peace deals, in which Moscow promised to a truce and a return of captured territory in the Donbas to Ukrainian control – why should we have confidence in Putin this time?

This explains Ukraine has been so insistent on external defense commitments. While the plan promises a "immediate joint military response" should Russia resume its aggression, and provides that "Ukraine will receive reliable defense commitments", the details include vague to alarming. The plan would not only deny the nation accession to NATO but also prohibit alliance nations from stationing military personnel on Ukraine's soil, thus preventing the peacekeeping contingent, presumptively headed by European powers, on which Ukraine had been relying to stop Putin from rebuilding his weakened forces, rearming, and attacking again.

International Reaction

A separate supplementary accord according to sources would grant Ukraine with a similar to NATO defense commitment, in which any later "significant, planned, and continuous armed attack" by Russia on Ukraine "would be considered as an act of war jeopardizing the tranquility of the allied countries." This implies a military response. But in contrast to a powerful Ukraine's armed forces – the nation's most reliable defense against renewed hostilities – the success of the side agreement would depend on the commitment of alliance members, like the US administration, to respond through arms to Putin's attacks, an action they have {not