The Poison Pill in the US Peace Plan for Ukraine: Europe Written Into the Outline

The press today positive noise-making about the US and Ukraine talking through a “28 point plan” and narrowing their differences. That is a contrast to reports of predictable Ukraine rejection and an explosively confrontational meeting between the apparent lead US negotiator, Dan Driscoll, and European ambassadors. The latter seems to have generated a bit of softening on the US side, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying that the Turkey Day “Sign it as is by Thanksgiving or we take all our toys away” now being self-retraded into “If you keep moving towards our demands, we can extend the process a bit.”

However, this does not change the fact that the deal will not get done, not due to it being unacceptable to Russia. It won’t get that far. The outline being unacceptable to the Europeans will be enough to sink it because it includes numerous provisions that call for European action. And that was not necessary.

Why this deal fails might seem like nit-picking or posturing but it is far more consequential than that. Trump is desperately trying to escape going down as the President who lost Ukraine, but that seems impossible at this late hour.

A reason, aside from denialism and lack of a Plan B, for the UK and Europe to keep so doggedly trying to breathe life into the Project Ukraine corpse is that they need to be able to try to escape blame, particularly after having spent so much in materiel and treasure. As reader Safety First explained:

Here is how Russian government-adjacent TV and radio commentators are explaining the EU’s little suicide pact – at present, i.e. I’ve heard this literally in the past day or three.

Start with the assumption that any realistic peace deal is a de-facto Ukrainian capitulation to Russian demands, and will be viewed by the West as a comprehensive defeat.

If the Europeans agree to, support, or simply not oppose such a peace deal, then a) they will “own” it, i.e. it will be “their” defeat, used by domestic political opponents (AfD, etc.) in the next election cycle; b) they will have a harder time ginning up anti-Russian hysteria, since they’ve just agreed with a “surrender” to the Russians, which c) is a key component of “military pseudo-Keynesianism” they want to pivot into economically.

If the Europeans violently oppose any such peace deal, and then Ukraine collapses, then a) it will be “Trump’s surrender” (or “someone else’s” surrender, in any case), and groups like AfD can be blamed too for being “defeatist”; b) they will continue to drum up “the Russians are coming” type of hysteria, which will c) support further cuts to social spending in favor of increasing military spending.

So politically, it makes perfect sense for the Europeans to hold out for extreme outcomes – Ukrainian or Russian capitulation – and not compromise on any sensible ones. That’s the story being told on Russian TV and radio at the moment.

Now this conduct is very much to Russia’s advantage. As both Alexander Mercouris and Larry Johnson have pointed out, citing remarks by Putin at a Security Council meeting, ending the war on the battlefield suits Russia.

But Russia was constrained by the universal view of its major economic partners and other Global South players, that they preferred that Russia negotiate a settlement. We’ve repeatedly argued that Russia had been continuing to prosecute the conflict despite its allies being very uncomfortable with Russia gobbling up a neighboring a country, even in the face of an existential threat. So Russia bending over backward to try to negotiate a resolution and failing due to the other side being unable to stand together is just dandy.

Recall that the original Istanbul peace talks were solely between the Russia and Ukraine. They did get as far as the two sides signing a preliminary outline.¹ But then Boris Johnson, presumably at US instigation or with US support (accounts vary) flew to Kiev and scuppered the talks by saying there would be no security guarantees from the West.

The US being willing to consummate a deal with Russia and try to force Ukraine to heel could have solved that problem. The US is the key military actor and could provide security guarantees, whether or not the hissy-fit EU states went along.² That would have opened up a very narrow pathway to a deal, which Team Trump seemed to be groping towards and blew: having the US do what in business is called a cram-down, as in force Ukraine to take a deal. We have said the US could do that if Trump thought he could stare down the hawks and the intel state and survive politically and physically. We dismissed that idea because Trump did not look to be in a position to defy Ukraine backers in the US. For instance, during an earlier phase of Lindsay Graham saber-rattling over his “bone-crushing sanctions” he said he had 80 votes in the Senate. That did not just indicate that Graham had a veto-proof majority but also that the number of Ukraine hawks exceeded the number needed to impeach Trump in the Senate. Trump’s approval ratings have fallen markedly since then.

Note also that over the weekend, Fox reported that Graham is reviving the secondary sanctions.

However, if you assume that Trump could deliver on his threat to withdraw US intel (which is more important now given that what the collective West can provide arms-wise is so bare), then the drill would have been for the US to beat Ukraine into compliance, get them to agree to a set of terms, and tell the UK and European, “Ukraine agrees to this. You are now proposing to make them keep fighting and dying for you, as opposed to for themselves?” Trump at least is still posturing that that could work. He’s making remarks consistent with what Putin warned in 2022: The longer it took for the West to talk to Russia, “the more difficult it will be to negotiate with us.” See. for instance from the New York Post:

Trump said the Ukrainian president will “have to like [the plan,] and if he doesn’t like it, then you know, they should just keep fighting, I guess.”

“At some point, he’s going to have to accept something he hasn’t accepted,” he told reporters at the White House.

But this sort of stance is unworkable given that the 28 point “plan,” which spokescritters like Keith Kellogg are now calling a framework, contains many important obligations by the EU and NATO, as in they are explicitly parties to this scheme. That outlined is at footnote 3. Mind you, as Alexander Mercouris and others have pointed out, more than one version of this outline has been published; the one that seems to have been circulated the most in the Western media was from a Ukraine source, and Mercouris pointed out it looked to have edits made to it, which presumably were not agreed by the US since there were no negotiations with Ukraine as of then.

If you look at Footnote 3, you will see that a full 7 of 28 items explicitly require acceptance or action by “Europe,” NATO, or the EU. What is “Europe”? Does it include the UK? What about non-NATO like Austria and Switzerland?

Trying to get NATO to commit to anything is also thorny. As we wrote before. NATO by design is a weak alliance. “NATO” cannot get members to do anything beyond the existing charter obligations save via nation by nation agreement. And even core NATO provisions, such as Article 5, require at most state-by-state, and not NATO-wide responses. NATO enlargement is one example. Recall that when Sweden was joining, Turkiye held the process hostage to try to extract concessions from Sweden regarding PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that Turkiye has designated a terrorist group…and is also had an MP in the Swedish parliament.

See where the deal as conceived cannot advance without UK/European cooperation:

2.A comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine and Europe

4. A dialogue will be held between Russia and Nato, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation in order to ensure global security and increase opportunities for co-operation and future economic development.

7. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join Nato, and Nato agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.

8. Nato agrees not to station troops in Ukraine.

11. Ukraine is eligible for EU membership and will receive short-term preferential access to the European market while this issue is being considered.

13. Russia will be reintegrated into the global economy:
a. The lifting of sanctions will be discussed and agreed upon in stages and on a case-by-case basis. [Recall that the EU has implemented a full 19 sanctions packages against Russia; that is independent of US and UK sanctions]

14. Frozen funds will be used as follows:

$100bn (£76bn) in frozen Russian assets will be invested in US-led efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine. The US will receive 50 per cent of the profits from this venture. Europe will add $100bn to increase the amount of investment available for Ukraine’s reconstruction. Frozen European funds will be unfrozen.

Note also:

12. A powerful global package of measures to rebuild Ukraine….

f. The World Bank will develop a special financing package to accelerate these efforts.

From what I can tell, it takes at least a 50% vote of World Bank members (vote share weighted by financial contributions); the US share is a bit over 16%. Admittedly, the US can lean on many World Bank members. But the US is at best relying on the idea that the Europeans will not want to break critical Bretton Woods institutions or NATO. If the UK and European members were honest with themselves, they would recognize that NATO is already broken by virtue of being not just drained of weapons but also woefully behind on advanced arms and the order of battle in the era of ISR. But the leadership and pols are not close to internalizing that.

One might ask how the US created such an own goal. Bloomberg has revealed that the 28 point framework was devises among Steve Wiktoff, Jared Kushner, and Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev over a few weeks. Note that these are all businessmen, not diplomats. John Helmer has explained briefly at his site and longer-form in podcasts that Dmitriev seems to fancy that he can become President of Russia, when the far more seasoned and deemed-essential Minister of Finance, Helmer described the reason for including him in the earlier negotiations was for the “strip tease” as to entice the money-grubbing Trump with the prospect of more lucre. Dmitriev has already gone outside his brief, annoying key officials in Russia.⁴

Now of course, it may be that Dmitriev stumbled into an outcome that Russia wished, of getting the US to sign onto a terms outline that no way, no how will “Europeans” accept. But particularly in light of extensive Russia descriptions of what happened before and after the Alaska summit, it seems vastly more likely that this 28 point outline was a crude attempt to codify what had been agreed at Alaska…..which was a handshake on terms that Witkoff had brought to Moscow and Putin had discussed in an over 3 hours meeting, and Putin reviewed point by point in Alaska with Trump. In other words, it seems as if Witkoff was the originator of the many points that have “Europe” hopelessly in the mix of this deal scheme.

And if you have any doubts that “Europe” is vanishingly unlikely to come around, see this item from the Financial Times:

Von der Leyen, whose chief of staff is participating in the Geneva talks, said three elements were critical.

“First, borders cannot be changed by force. Second, as a sovereign nation there cannot be limitations on Ukraine’s armed forces [and] third, the centrality of the European Union in securing peace for Ukraine must be fully reflected,” she said. 

Those with sterner constitutions, please read Leaked: Europe’s rival peace plan for Ukraine in full in the Telegraph. The opening section alone shows that “Europe” has not budged an inch despite the Ukraine collapses at key points on the line of contact:

If you have been following these negotiations at all, you will recall that Russia rejected “ceasefire first” for the entirely logical reason that it would allow Ukraine to rest and rearm. And a ceasefire with no monitoring provisions set first is even more of an insult to intelligence.

However, it seems that Trump still regards it as in his interest to try to keep this negotiation sham going, perhaps out of sheer vanity, to preserve his self-image as a colossus, a driver of events. In the meantime, a Ukrainian on Twitter underscored delay increases the cost human lives and what might be salvaged for Ukraine as a nation:

Every subsequent deal for Ukraine will only be worse — because we are losing. We are losing people, territory, and the economy.
The EU (which by the way has paid Russia more than €311 billion for energy and goods since February 2022) has no real strategy, no way to stop fueling… pic.twitter.com/zx8lBKQn7X

— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) November 22, 2025

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¹ Rest assured that a lot remained to be settled. For instance, Victoria Nuland banged on about a long, detailed annex with various weapons types itemized and limits on how much Ukraine could have of each. There was apparently a very big gap between Russia’s demand and Ukraine’s offer at that juncture.

²Turkiye has the biggest NATO army in Europe. Theoretically, Turkiye could join the guarantees so that Ukraine had to rely on more than the US and Russia. But it seems vanishingly unlikely that this sort of thing would get beyond the trial balloon stage. As you can see from the outline below, the EU is still persisting with having EU member states as part of peacekeeping forces, as opposed to providing a security guarantee.

³ Per the Telegraph:

Trump’s peace plan
Sovereignty and security guarantees
1. Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.
2. A comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine and Europe. All ambiguities of the last 30 years will be considered settled.