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“US and Ukrainian negotiators have drawn up an ‘updated and refined peace framework’, and plan to continue work on a peace plan over the coming days, the countries announced [last week]… The plan's original draft, details of which were leaked last week, was cautiously welcomed by Russia, but not by leaders in Kyiv and Europe, who saw it as too favourable to the Kremlin…
“While the draft of the US-backed plan has not been published in full, major details have leaked in recent days. Controversial provisions include Ukraine agreeing to withdraw troops from parts of the eastern Donetsk region that they currently control, and international recognition of de facto Russian control of Donetsk, the neighbouring Luhansk region and the southern Crimea peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014…
“The plan also includes freezing the borders of Ukraine's southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions along the current battle lines, and would see Ukraine agreeing to limit the size of its military to 600,000 personnel, down from about 880,000 now. The draft crucially includes a pledge for Ukraine not to seek membership of NATO. Instead, Kyiv would receive ‘reliable security guarantees’, about which no details have been given.” BBC
The left is critical of the leaked peace plan, arguing that it makes too many concessions to Russia.
“As a sovereign nation, Ukraine shouldn’t be forced to accept limits on the size of its armed forces or the presence of foreign troops on its territory… A bad deal would pose a threat not just to Ukraine, but to US strategic interests as well. Russia would emerge militarily ascendant, menacing Europe and increasing rather than reducing the burden on America…
“The Pentagon would likely need to ramp up support for NATO allies with more troops, more surveillance assets, more missile defenses and more crisis management — leaving fewer resources to check China in the Indo-Pacific. If Putin violated the agreement, as past evidence suggests he would, the US would either have to push back at risk of getting pulled into a larger, messier war — or be exposed as a paper tiger… The only peace the US should be pursuing is one that restrains [Putin’s] ambitions rather than encourages them.”
Michael Bloomberg, Bloomberg
“Solid majorities [of Ukrainians] continue to reject the idea of ceding large amounts of land to Russia in exchange for peace… Support for Ukraine has grown stronger across the U.S. political spectrum; nearly three-quarters of Republicans [in a] poll last month said that they want the U.S. to continue sending weapons to Ukraine; 86 percent said that they want to impose more sanctions on Russia.”
Simon Shuster and Missy Ryan, The Atlantic
“In 2025, Russia took an additional 1 percent of Ukraine’s land area at an estimated cost of 200,000 troops killed and wounded… At its current rate, it will take Russia until August 2027 at the earliest to conquer the rest of the Donbas. But Putin likely still believes he is winning this war…
“There’s a disconnect in time frames between Washington and Moscow right now. Trump came into office pledging to end the war in a day, has given Putin various two-week deadlines, and just a few days ago appeared to hope this could be wrapped up by Thanksgiving. Putin, meanwhile, considers the very existence of an independent Ukraine a threat and is thinking in terms of centuries… An end to the war in Ukraine may not be possible as long as Russia’s president is still in power.”
Joshua Keating, Vox
“Isolationists pretend that those of us who support Ukraine’s righteous fight believe that more weapons and sanctions will enable the country to win back all of its territory. That’s a strawman. Ukraine may never regain its lost territory, and it certainly won’t as long as Putin is alive. But so long as Ukrainians retain the will to fight, providing better arms and imposing punishing sanctions will increase the costs of Putin’s aggression and put them in a better position for future negotiations.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
The right is divided.
The right is divided.
“Trump may have discounted Ukraine's concerns in attempting to find a way to stop the war, but his critics and European leaders are discounting Russia's interests and their position on the ground. There is a certain unreality about the idea that a peace plan will do what war hasn't, which is to convince Russia to retreat. Vladimir Putin has no desire to end the war without achieving his core goals of the invasion, which are – at a minimum – to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and to re-incorporate the majority-ethnic Russian territory back into Russia proper…
“Putin wants more than that, of course, but he won't agree to stop until both of those goals are guaranteed, no matter how many more men he'll lose in the fight. Putin doesn't have the same frame of mind as the West does in that regard, nor does he face domestic pressure to end the war even after nearly four years of a quagmire… The ‘vast’ improvements [from the original plan] took both of Putin's core demands back off the table, so it's no surprise that his response to the new plan has been nyet.”
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
“Efforts to improve the terms of the deal run the risk of scuttling it altogether with the Russians… Consider negotiations that took place in April 2022, two months after the war began. Russia demanded far more extensive ‘demilitarization,’ including an 85,000 cap on Ukrainian troops, strict quantitative and qualitative limits on Ukrainian weaponry, and an end to Western military cooperation with Ukraine…
“I find it astonishing that, this time around, media coverage did not lead with Russian acceptance of a security guarantee for Ukraine. Given that Russia’s core war aim was to eliminate Ukraine as an independent, democratic state, and its ultimate goal was to break NATO, these would be high prices for Putin to pay, no matter what he got in return.”
Niall Ferguson, Free Press
Others argue, “Ukraine isn’t losing the war. Russia is still gaining ground in the east, but at tremendous cost. Ukraine has overperformed—holding out nearly four years longer than anyone expected, even while fighting with too few weapons too often delivered too late. The West has a fighting ally on the front lines against an adversary that threatens to use nuclear weapons. The best we can do is negotiate its ally’s surrender terms?…
“The real fantasists are Republicans in Congress and the White House who think Mr. Putin can be coaxed into giving up his Ukraine ambitions with commercial deals and ‘cultural exchange.’ This reminds us of John Kerry thinking a nuclear deal would cause Iran’s mullahs to give up their jihadist dreams… The test of any peace agreement isn’t that the fighting stops for a time. The test is whether a deal creates the conditions for a durable peace.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
