America is selling a Ukraine peace plan. No one is buying, yet
Summary
If they can’t seal the deal, Donald Trump’s team may walk away
FOR A MAN who promised to end the war in Ukraine within a day of taking office, Donald Trump has been taking his time. His first hundred days expire next week and have so far failed to produce even a short-term ceasefire, let alone a peace deal. Instead, as his vice-president, J.D. Vance, warned on April 23rd, he seems to be preparing to “walk away" from a process that has turned out to be as hard as everyone, apart from Mr Trump and his team, had predicted.
America has been hawking around Europe proposals that would reward Russia’s aggression against Ukraine with formal recognition of its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, a promise that Ukraine will never be allowed to join NATO, and an end to the sanctions imposed on Russia after the invasions of 2014 and 2022. In return, America is neither offering to provide Ukraine with security guarantees, nor to help with any other such guarantees the Europeans might offer. Nor is there any sign that America is proposing to make its sanctions relief conditional on continued Russian good behaviour. But Ukraine would get an end to the fighting along current lines, at least for as long as Vladimir Putin manages to keep his word.
The best that can be said for the American plan is that it fails to give Mr Putin everything he wants. There is no formal recognition of his annexation in 2022 of the four provinces in south-eastern Ukraine that Russia now partially occupies. And there is, according to leaked reports, no acceptance of Russian demands that caps be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces after any peace agreement comes into effect.
So far, no one has endorsed the American proposals. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, said his country will never formally recognise Russia’s seizure of Crimea, prompting Mr Trump to call him “inflammatory". But Russia has not yet accepted the plan either: Mr Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, will visit Moscow soon to try and get Mr Putin’s assent to it. European countries have been publicly silent, but will not want to undercut Ukraine.
The big question is what happens next. If Mr Trump does walk away, will he end arms supplies to Ukraine? Will he end intelligence-sharing? Will he unilaterally lift sanctions? Perhaps most vital, will he at least let Europe buy crucial weapons from America, especially Patriot air-defence systems, to give to Ukraine? As so often, no one has a clue.
