Filenews 24 November 2025
By Marc Champion
The American plan to end the Russian invasion is a special document. It rewards aggression and punishes the victim. It undermines the most important principle of international law, which is that sovereign borders cannot be changed by force. It proposes security guarantees, but does not say how they will be implemented – and then limits the means by which they could be implemented.
It recommends the imposition of Ukraine's capitulation for profit and benefit, the plan for a modern Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in which the interest of one side in the division of Ukraine is territorial and the other commercial. In a word, it's embarrassing.
However, the crucial question is another: Is this the best deal that Ukraine and its remaining European allies could hope to achieve at this point? The answer is no, and they have already rejected its basic terms. Unfortunately, however, this question is complicated, "cyclical" so to speak, because the answer depends almost entirely on Donald Trump.
First, the agreement itself. As for the territories, the leadership of Kiev and most Ukrainians have long accepted that they will have to cede control of the territories occupied by Russia. However, this agreement would have a much greater impact. It offers Russia "de facto recognition" by the international community of almost all Ukrainian territories it occupies from 2014 until the day of signing, as well as the so-called "Fortress Belt" of Donetsk, which it has failed to occupy. This area – critical to Ukraine's defense – will be turned into a demilitarized zone.
De facto acceptance was what happened in East Germany and the Baltic countries after World War II. NATO has never challenged the Soviet Union's control over these countries, but neither has it ever recognized the sovereignty of the Soviet Union or the existence of the German Democratic Republic as a separate state from West Germany. Eventually, decades later, all these Soviet structures were returned to their rightful owners. There is no reason to include the word "recognition" in an agreement, de facto or not, unless the goal is to mark the final recognition of Russian sovereignty.
Then, a demilitarized fortress zone sounds logical. However, this is a huge concession because it would likely take at least another year and tens of thousands of lives for Russian forces to capture the cities that make up the zone, two of which are far larger than anything Russia has captured since 2022. Meanwhile, once abandoned and handed over to Russian control, these cities will not be able to be recovered, nor can their natural defenses be reproduced. Russian forces could move quickly west, north and south – if they violate their ceasefire commitments, as they have done in the past.
If the Russians were seriously committed to not attacking again and the U.S. providing guarantees, there would be an explicit abandonment of Putin's further annexation claims, as well as a significant provision for a competent international mission that would ensure that the Kremlin would honour its commitments.
Any attempt to end the war once and for all would also require the withdrawal of all heavy weapons, attack drones and the concentration of troops at a significant distance – tens of kilometers – from the entire line of contact, including Crimea, so that Russia cannot endanger Ukrainian ports and trade. None of the above is provided.
Regarding financial compensation. The Kremlin will give up $100 billion of the roughly $300 billion of central bank assets that Western governments pledged at the start of the war. The US will supervise the use of this money for the reconstruction of Ukraine and will receive all profits from it. European taxpayers will pay an additional $100 billion. This is not a big concession on Russia's part: None of the frozen assets will ever be returned to Moscow, and any post-war court would impose much larger war reparations, even if it is not possible to raise additional money.
So Russia loses nothing, the US wins and Europe is left with the bill for rebuilding what Russia destroyed – an amount that the World Bank estimates at more than $500 billion. Because Europe does not have this money, Ukraine's future will be one of poverty and instability, with membership in the European Union (allowed under the agreement) a distant dream.
The sanctions (against Russia) will be lifted over time and could be reinstated. This, like the entire process, will be under US control. And since the agreement stipulates cooperation between the US and Russia on the exploitation of critical minerals, rest assured that progress in securing these agreements will ultimately determine the pace of sanctions lifting, not Russia's behaviour towards Ukraine.
Finally, the security guarantees. There are some reports that require a reaction to any violation of the agreement by Russia, but they are vague and the threshold for action is high and asymmetric. Any violation by Russia must be "significant" and "sustainable" to provoke a reaction, while a single rocket fired from Ukraine into Russian territory will permanently nullify the guarantees - a piece of cake for Russia's experts in "false flag" operations.
Not that this would matter much, because the 28 points of the plan include nothing about what would happen, or by whom, if Russia invaded again. These are the same vague assurances that France, Russia, the UK and the US gave to Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nuclear deterrent in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum – assurances that proved futile.
Other clauses undermine the only reasonable security guarantee that could be given to Ukraine, which is to strengthen its defenses to such an extent that any future Russian attack would be futile. Its forces, currently numbering 800,000 to 900,000 people, will be reduced according to Trump's plan to 600,000, while Russia will have no such limitations, even geographically. NATO members will not be able to place troops on Ukrainian territory, further limiting options for either guarantees or oversight.
Trump could, if he wanted, pressure Putin to sign off on a real end to the war, but he chooses not to do so because he has much more influence in Kyiv and much more to gain in Moscow. Even so, no Ukrainian leader can or should accept this agreement, not even Europe. It would provoke an uprising inside the country and pave the way for future destabilization and re-invasion of Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in an almost impossible position. The way out of it is to reveal Putin's true intentions, presenting him with modifications – point by point – that will transform this plan from a document based on trust in the Kremlin's non-existent good faith, to one that will have verification mechanisms and power. This means insisting on the presence of international peacekeepers and in a much wider demilitarized zone. It means removing any restrictions on Ukrainian forces or weapons that can be provided by allies, among many other changes. If the Kremlin does not accept them, it should be clear even to the White House that it is being used.
