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Ukraine faces a difficult decision in the days ahead as the Trump administration pushes the country to embrace a 28-point peace plan that would see it make major concessions to Russia\u2014including relinquishing control of territory that Russian forces don\u2019t currently occupy.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now, Ukraine is under some of the heaviest pressure yet,\u201d Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said<\/a> on Friday in an address to his nation. \u201cRight now, Ukraine may find itself facing a very tough choice. Either the loss of our dignity or the risk of losing a key partner. Either the difficult 28 points, or an extremely hard winter\u2014the hardest yet\u2014and the dangers that follow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Ukraine faces a difficult decision in the days ahead as the Trump administration pushes the country to embrace a 28-point peace plan that would see it make major concessions to Russia\u2014including relinquishing control of territory that Russian forces don\u2019t currently occupy.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, Ukraine is under some of the heaviest pressure yet,\u201d Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said<\/a> on Friday in an address to his nation. \u201cRight now, Ukraine may find itself facing a very tough choice. Either the loss of our dignity or the risk of losing a key partner. Either the difficult 28 points, or an extremely hard winter\u2014the hardest yet\u2014and the dangers that follow,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The Trump administration has reportedly<\/a> warned that Ukraine could lose U.S. intelligence and military assistance if Zelensky doesn\u2019t accept the peace proposal, which would likely worsen Ukraine\u2019s battlefield position. President Donald Trump has said<\/a> he wants Kyiv to agree to the deal by Thanksgiving Day, giving Ukraine little time to negotiate.<\/p>\n Still, it remains unclear how flexible the United States, Ukraine, Russia, and European Union are, especially amid seeming contradictions within U.S. diplomatic efforts.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s<\/span> 28-point peace proposal<\/a> would give Russia much of what it has sought, including limits on Ukraine\u2019s military size, political concessions by Ukraine, and \u201cde facto\u201d U.S. recognition of Russian control over Crimea and the Donbas<\/a>\u2014the eastern Ukrainian region made up of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts\u2014including territory that is still under Ukrainian control.<\/p>\n The plan, which was hashed out in late October by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev<\/a>, a Russian envoy and the head of Russia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund, was first reported on by Axios earlier this week.<\/p>\n A separate, second document reportedly<\/a> says that the United States would offer Ukraine a security guarantee modeled on NATO\u2019s Article 5 collective defense mechanism. If Russia attacked Ukraine, the United States would be obligated to respond, including potentially with \u201carmed force.\u201d<\/p>\n Ukraine and its European allies are likely to find the peace proposal challenging to agree to. Kyiv\u2019s acceptance of its terms would weaken Ukraine\u2019s ability to defend itself against further Russian aggression, as well as hand over populated cities. European Union members have been firm in support of Ukraine, with top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas saying<\/a> Thursday that \u201cthe pressure should be on the aggressor.\u201d<\/p>\n Moscow has more reasons to favor the document, with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday saying<\/a> that it could be \u201cthe basis for a final peace settlement.\u201d Still, with Russia having suffered<\/a> more than 1 million casualties in the war, the offer of any security guarantees to Ukraine may be unacceptable to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n The U.S. Congress\u2019s role in the deal is also unclear. Though the plan stipulates that it would be \u201clegally binding,\u201d it\u2019s not clear if this means that any eventual agreement would be akin to a ratified treaty.<\/p>\n If a deal is reached and it amounts to little more than Trump offering his signature or issuing an executive order that could easily be undone by a future U.S. president, then any security guarantees offered to Ukraine would carry little weight. Putin has a history of violating past agreements with Ukraine, so Kyiv is likely to desire security guarantees from Washington with a firmer legal basis.<\/p>\n The plan appeared<\/span> to catch both Ukraine and its European allies by surprise, and it prompted a diplomatic scramble that\u2019s seen Zelensky hold talks with top officials on both sides of the Atlantic in recent days. Kallas on Thursday said<\/a> Europe had not been informed of the effort. The White House also did not inform<\/a> key U.S. lawmakers.<\/p>\n Yet despite the alarm that the peace plan was met with in some European capitals<\/a>, Zelensky said that he would continue to \u201cwork calmly\u201d with the United States on the plan.<\/p>\n Top U.S. military officials, including U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, were in Kyiv this week as part of the Trump administration\u2019s effort to revive the peace process, which has largely been stalled since Trump and Putin\u2019s August summit in Alaska.<\/p>\n Driscoll spoke with a group of European ambassadors in Kyiv on Friday, where he sent the message that \u201cthings will only get worse in the long term\u201d for Ukraine, said a European diplomat who was briefed on the meeting. The diplomat spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.<\/p>\n Driscoll, along with U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, also met with Zelensky on Friday. \u201cWe agreed to work together with the U.S. and Europe at the level of national security advisors to make the path to peace truly doable,\u201d Zelensky said<\/a> in a post on X after their meeting. \u201cUkraine has always respected and continues to respect U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s desire to put an end to the bloodshed, and we view every realistic proposal positively. We agreed to maintain constant contact, and our teams are ready to work 24\/7,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s pressure comes at a tough moment for Zelensky on both a domestic political level and in terms of developments on the battlefield. Zelensky is dealing with a corruption scandal<\/a> while Russia is simultaneously considered to be on the verge of seizing the city of Pokrovsk<\/a>\u2014which, if captured, would mark the most significant victory for Russian forces since the seizure of Avdiivka in early 2024.<\/p>\n The pressure Zelensky is facing on multiple fronts is seemingly a large part of the reason the Trump administration chose this moment to drop the new plan and launch a full-court press approach, believing that the Ukrainian leader would have little choice but to embrace what\u2019s being offered.<\/p>\n The reported threat to possibly cut off U.S. support appears to be yet another lever the Trump administration is using to push Zelensky. Should the United States withdraw intelligence support from Ukraine, it would have \u201cbattlefield implications,\u201d said a second European official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.<\/p>\n Still, U.S. military support<\/span> for Ukraine is not the game-changer it was in 2022, when U.S. shipments of Javelin anti-tank missiles and other weapons helped Kyiv blunt Russia\u2019s offensive. Europe has stepped up arms production for Ukraine since the start of the war, with the total value of European weapons sent to Ukraine now exceeding the value of U.S. arms sent, according<\/a> to the Kiel Institute, a think tank based in Germany. Ukraine\u2019s own production has also accelerated; as of early 2024, the country assembled<\/a> over 90 percent of its drones domestically.<\/p>\n A shutoff of U.S. intelligence could prove more serious. Ukraine lost ground when a similar intelligence shutoff occurred<\/a> in March. Still, since then, European nations have stepped<\/a> up efforts to get access to key intelligence sources, like satellites, that previously the United States supplied to Ukraine.<\/p>\n Ukraine also recently announced plans to import<\/a> U.S. natural gas to cover its cold winter months, and relies<\/a> on the purchase of U.S. air defense missiles to protect Ukrainian energy infrastructure and cities.<\/p>\n On the other hand, if Zelensky were to refuse to bend to U.S. pressure, he could see an upswing in public approval similar to Ukrainian domestic society\u2019s reaction<\/a> to the fraught February Oval Office meeting between Zelensky and Trump.<\/p>\n Trump, who has been impatient for a Ukraine-Russia peace deal since returning to Washington for a second term, has fluctuated in his approach to the process in the time since that February meeting and at various points has appeared to lose patience with Moscow as Russia continues to pummel Ukraine with airstrikes and push for more territory.<\/p>\n Conversely, since a positive meeting in Rome in April and a subsequent sit-down at the NATO summit in The Hague in June, Trump\u2019s relationship with Zelensky<\/a> appeared to be improving. At the United Nations General Assembly in late September, Zelensky suggested<\/a> that Trump had undergone a \u201cbig shift\u201d and no longer trusted Putin. But the 28-point peace plan and its favorable terms for Russia are indicative of the myriad ways in which Trump\u2019s approach to diplomacy remains volatile and difficult to predict.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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