The press today’s positive noise-making was 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:
3. It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and Nato will not expand further.
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
____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.
Trump’s peace plan
Sovereignty and security guarantees1. 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.
3. It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and Nato will not expand further.
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.
5. Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees.
6. The size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be limited to 600,000 personnel.
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.9. European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.10. US guarantee:▪️ The US will receive compensation for the guarantee.▪️ If Ukraine invades Russia, it will lose the guarantee.▪️ If Russia invades Ukraine, in addition to a decisive co-ordinated military response, all global sanctions will be reinstated, recognition of the new territory and all other benefits of this deal will be revoked.▪️ If Ukraine launches a missile at Moscow or St Petersburg without cause, the security guarantee will be deemed invalid.11. Ukraine is eligible for EU membership and will receive short-term preferential access to the European market while this issue is being considered.
Economics and recovery12. A powerful global package of measures to rebuild Ukraine, including but not limited to:
a. The creation of a Ukraine Development Fund to invest in fast-growing industries, including technology, data centres, and artificial intelligence.b. The United States will co-operate with Ukraine to jointly rebuild, develop, modernise, and operate Ukraine’s gas infrastructure, including pipelines and storage facilities.c. Joint efforts to rehabilitate war-affected areas for the restoration, reconstruction and modernisation of cities and residential areas
d. Infrastructure development
e. Extraction of minerals and natural resources.f. The World Bank will develop a special financing package to accelerate these efforts.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.b. The United States will enter into a long-term economic co-operation agreement for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centres, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities.c. Russia will be invited to rejoin the G8.
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. The remainder of the frozen Russian funds will be invested in a separate US-Russian investment vehicle that will implement joint projects in specific areas. This fund will be aimed at strengthening relations and increasing common interests to create a strong incentive not to return to conflict.
15. A joint American-Russian working group on security issues will be established to promote and ensure compliance with all provisions of this agreement.
16. Russia will enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine.
17. The United States and Russia will agree to extend the validity of treaties on the non-proliferation and control of nuclear weapons, including the START I Treaty.
18. Ukraine agrees to be a non-nuclear state in accordance with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
19. The Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant will be launched under the supervision of the IAEA, and the electricity produced will be distributed equally between Russia and Ukraine – 50:50.20. Both countries undertake to implement educational programmes in schools and society aimed at promoting understanding and tolerance of different cultures and eliminating racism and prejudice:a. Ukraine will adopt EU rules on religious tolerance and the protection of linguistic minorities.b. Both countries will agree to abolish all discriminatory measures and guarantee the rights of Ukrainian and Russian media and education.c. All Nazi ideology and activities must be rejected and prohibited.Territory
21. a. Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognised as de facto Russian, including by the United States.
b. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be frozen along the line of contact, which will mean de facto recognition along the line of contact.c. Russia will relinquish other agreed territories it controls outside the five regions.
d. Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk Oblast that they currently control, and this withdrawal zone will be considered a neutral demilitarised buffer zone, internationally recognised as territory belonging to the Russian Federation. Russian forces will not enter this demilitarised zone.22. After agreeing on future territorial arrangements, both the Russian Federation and Ukraine undertake not to change these arrangements by force. Any security guarantees will not apply in the event of a breach of this commitment.23. Russia will not prevent Ukraine from using the Dnieper River for commercial activities, and agreements will be reached on the free transport of grain across the Black Sea.Humanitarian issues and confidence-building measures
24. A humanitarian committee will be established to resolve outstanding issues:a. All remaining prisoners and bodies will be exchanged on an ‘all for all’ basis.b. All civilian detainees and hostages will be returned, including children.c. A family reunification programme will be implemented.d. Measures will be taken to alleviate the suffering of the victims of the conflict.
25. Ukraine will hold elections in 100 days.26. All parties involved in this conflict will receive full amnesty for their actions during the war and agree not to make any claims or consider any complaints in the future.27. This agreement will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by the Peace Council, headed by President Donald Trump. Sanctions will be imposed for violations.28. Once all parties agree to this memorandum, the ceasefire will take effect immediately after both sides retreat to agreed points to begin implementation of the agreement.Kirill Dmitriev is the Stanford and Harvard educated official appointed by President Vladimir Putin to persuade American businessmen to invest in the profits to be made from dismantling US economic sanctions against Russia…
That Dmitriev is proposing to open sectors of the Russian economy which are legally closed under national security control – at the same time as the US is escalating its military power projection from Greenland to Alaska – has been noted by the Russian Foreign Ministry, which has been trying to curb Dmitriev’s powers, as well as his tongue.
Dmitriev has retreated, ingenuously telling the BBC: “first of all, I am focused on economics and investment, so I don’t comment on political issues.” Then he did just that..
Dmitriev was referring to President Putin’s undertaking to President Trump during their telephone call of February 12 to halt Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy targets. This partial ceasefire by the Russian side has been ignored by the Ukrainians and their US and NATO advisors….there has been no Russian retaliation yet.
In the record which the Russian and American negotiators have been making since the presidents’ telephone call, the outcome to date is nothing but “minor and petty episodes”.
Dmitriev is the only Russian official to say otherwise.
In other words, Dmitriev has a track record of being a loose cannon.
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Europe’s goose is cooked. My only problem with that is connected to what Yves points out – that Europe holding out and rolling out faux-Keynesian military spending at the expense of the welfare states hurts ordinary Europeans.
Then again, perhaps we deserve just that.
OIVet: Europe holding out and rolling out faux-Keynesian military spending at the expense of the welfare states….
…is probably the only conceivable way the current order and its incompetent elites in the EU can survive, unfortunately. Certainly, the only way that those incompetents can conceive of surviving.
Meet the New Donkeys, perhaps even stupider than the old ones —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions_led_by_donkeys#Origin
OIFVet: Then again, perhaps we deserve just that
Nobody deserves that. Europe is on track to repeat the same repertoire of mistakes and disasters that Karl Polanyi diagnosed as leading up to WWI and 2 a century ago.
The only consolation is that Marx’s dictum that ‘history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce’ may apply. In other words, a quick, shorthand analysis of just why WW1 went as wrong as it did is that elites then had no conception of how large-scale land warfare between massive, then-modern industrialized states would actually be — specifically, what the industrialization of slaughter via the machine gun, etc., meant. Now, on the other hand, Europe is full of deindustrialized, neoliberal states who may simply not have the means to reindustrialize to fight wars.
Thankfully, if so. Because make no mistake. If the weapons are built, there’ll be political pressure to use them, if merely because the defense industries will lobby the politicians for their use to keep profits up.
I meant it as we as Europeans perhaps deserve to be depredated financially by having our safety nets spent on useless military hardware, if we are so easily manipulated by what is objectively a third-rate political class devoid of leadership or any other redeeming qualities.
I understood what you meant, and you’re right as far as that goes. My fear is greater than that –that the consequences of “Keynesian defense spending” will be full-scale militarism and aggression, and their consequences.
And what would their “full scale militarism and aggression” be, considering the absence of resources? Europe seems slightly worse off than the Qing in 1870s now.
Europe seems slightly worse off than the Qing in 1870s now.
Heh. Maybe.
But the UK and France, while they certainly can’t do industrial era-scale warfare and have populations absolutely unwilling to go along with war, still have nukes and some significant kit — some of the British missiles are actually superior to their American equivalents in their range, forex, though nothing that Russia can’t deal with. London also has its snout very much on the ground in Ukraine, with special forces — Zelensky’s protection is British — and observers taking notes on the war in a way that none of the other European countries have.
Whether that matters a damn is arguable. Especially as the EU has committed another arrogant blunder, demanding the UK pay for the privilege of selling its weapons to the EU to the tune of €6-6.75 billion, or almost $8 billion.
It is not only “manipulated” but abused. Look at the stolen election in Romania last year. Cannot say people were manipulated. When the “manipulation” did not succeed, they were accused of being manipulated by Russia and elections were cancelled and the right person ultimately elected.
While I am surprised that the Ukrainian population doesn’t rise up, I hope that when a similar situation befalls countries like Romania or Bulgaria or Hungary, people will rise up, not wanting to suffer such radship for nothing.
Ukrainian population has risen in 2014 (part of it, that is, because it’s always only a part that rises).
Exactly, we are seeing the collision of the Neoconservative agenda with the Neoliberal hegemony. That they explicitly invoke Keynes is a sign of true desperation. While the neocon war machine has flourished by exemplifying the observations of MMT, the Fed can’t print 152mm artillery shells. Mobilizing industry on a scale necessary for wartime production would require industrial policy, abhorrent to neoliberalism. Instead we see MMTs inflation predictions at work; when a government decided to spend millions of Euros on artillery shells, production inched up, but the prices quadrupled.
Between rentier-friendly procurement, deindustrialization, and general hollowing out of surplus capacity, neoliberal policy has kneecapped the neoconservative war lobby’s ability to actually fight wars. Without cheap and reliable energy from Russia re-industrialization of Europe seems unlikely.
They can always go to war armed with shovels. Isn’t that supposedly what the Russians are using?
Sounds good in theory but maybe not so easy. Through neglect a Shovel Gap has developed and the Russian pace of shovel production far surpasses that of Europe. According to the British tabloid press, Putin has weaponised gardening, which if true means its all over for England.
Meanwhile the US Army’s Next-Gen Shovel project, Raytheon’s KD24 (aka ‘KillDig”), is already a billion dollars over budget and almost 2 years late. Initial tests show the networked shovel vulnerable to hacking and prone to catch fire when exposed to “excessive moisture”.
OIFVet: War is the health of the state, which explains why Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas have emerge as pestiferous leaders of what is supposed to be only an administrative commission. The European Commission, and Ursula as chair, are not supposed to have executive function.
The purpose of war is also to destroy the social state: We all know that the money being wasted in Ukraine is undermining basic structures like national health plans and public health.
What is being cooked here, let’s hope, is northern European arrogance. One hint was the recent local / town elections in Denmark, which the ruling coalition lost — and the Social Democrats lost the mayor’s office in Copenhagen for the first time in 80 or so years. The governments of Poland, Germany, Netherlands, and France are surviving on political maneuvering and institutional inertia. (And I’m not sure that the travails of the big warmongers extend to, ohhh, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, Eire, and even Italy.)
DJG: I am on track for a job that will require me to travel extensively in Europe and the US. Hopefully it will give me a much closer look at our Northern European brethren and why they are the way that they are. Hopefully it will also take me to Italy and I will get to enjoy a bit of the life there. I will look you up should the opportunity present itself. Stay well, my friend :)
OIFVet: It’s all fun and games and airline loyalty programs till one gets stuck in Hanover, Germany, subsisting on a diet of headcheese sandwiches.
Make sure you get a good contract. Good luck in the interview process — which now takes much too long.
One eats well here in Italy, and I enjoy the many local Undisclosed Specialties, so make up an excuse to cross the Adriatic.
DJG: The purpose of war is also to destroy the social state.
As always, Orwell —
“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”
But will the peasants be given a chance to express their disdain, or will elections be widely canceled or massaged? Portents are not encouraging for the elite allowing themselves to go into the night.
The real poison pill for the Europeans is the fact that the US intends to swipe Russia’s frozen assets and leave the European nations with nothing but the debts that they raised off those frozen assets. But I am surprised that what the Russians think of this deal is not being reported in the media. To be frank, none of the Russian aims for the SMO will be fulfilled. The fascist regime will still be in place because everybody gets an amnesty. But a more blatant one is where the Ukrainian army will be restricted to 600,000 men though the Europeans are demanding that it be raised to 800,000 men. One of the main aims of the SMO was to demilitarize the Ukraine, right? But at 600,000, it would be the biggest army in Europe. In NATO the biggest army is the American army at 1,315,600 people with maybe 85,000 in Europe. The next biggest is the Turks at 355,200 people – half the size of the proposed Ukrainian army. Yeah, the Russians will totally go for that and the rest of that 28-point plans runs in the same vein-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO#Military_personnel
The western mainstream media never reports, at least not accurately, what Russia thinks about these things. It tries to convey the false impression that Russia is fully involved.
Since we are going around the loop, yet again, of western powers negotiating with each other instead of Russia, we will get the same results, namely that Russia will reject it for obvious reasons, and the west will then try to portray Russia as unwilling to negotiate, hostile, aggressive, belligerent, etc.
We’ve been here before, a few times. This so-called peace plan will, of course, fail to go anywhere – and the conflict will go on until Ukraine’s military collapses.
The European media are still in complete denial about the relative strengths of the 2 sides. A classic case in point is a cartoon on the front page of the Guardian today, where Putin is depicted as a turkey, and Trump is urging Zelensky to sign as the ‘Putin turkey is to be spared this thanksgiving!’
Incidentally, the Dawn Sturgess show trial inquest findings are shortly to be made public i.n Britain. She was the drug addict whose death has been attributed to the deadly Russian poison intended for the Skripals. Despite a million holes and inconsistencies in the narrative, and the fact that the Skripals have been kept entirely concealed from communication ever since, possibly the proverbial 6 feet under perhaps, this is sure to be leveraged to whip up even more anti-Russia fever.
My summary: To assuage Donnie’s amour propre and the EU’s self-importance, Ukrainians must continue to die.
This morning’s paper edition of Fatto Quotidiano had a long article on this new European plan.
It is obvious that the Russians won’t accept the Euro position for two big reasons:
–The allowance to get Ukraine into NATO. Question: What purpose does it serve to let the reduced, corrupt, exploited Ukraine accede to NATO?
–The benighted reason: The Euro proposal seems to want to up the Ukrainian army’s number to 800,000. This is an unsupportable number — a country in demographic collapse from an enormous death toll, flight of much of the population, desertion by young men so as to avoid going to the front to be slaughtered — can’t even raise such an army. Estimates of the current population as published here at Naked Capitalism range from 25 million to about 32 million.
–The consequences, from the Russian point of view? The same old games coming out of NATO summits.
I’d also like to point out a thread that Yves Smith (and Lambert Strether) developed: Loss of executive function (as in decision-making ability) among Western elites. The behavior of the Euro Commission is self-destructive, irrational, self-serving, and short sighted. This cannot be chalked up to plain old stupidity, but it is more likely to be a combination of the moral degradation of neoliberalism (read: greed) plus the unhealthy effects of social media (which cause people to think that they are “discussing” issues).
I note that Giorgia Meloni, according FQ, is tap-dancing around the Euro proposal, supposedly supporting Trump’s effort instead. On the one hand, this tap-dancing is rational — Ursula and Kaja are indeed daffy, let alone Mark Rutte. On the other hand, Meloni is acting like the head of a satellite state — late-stage Hungarian communism. Hmmm.
FQ’s tickertape / update service, for those who read Italian:
https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/live-post/2025/11/24/ucraina-rubio-il-piano-di-pace-rispetta-la-sovranita-di-kiev-ora-la-la-bozza-mosca-per-chiudere-entro-giovedi/8205431/
PS: A problem here is that Russia made a major mess after the Bucharest / 2008 NATO summits: Diddling with Georgia. Other countries, including the Global South, don’t want a repeat of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russians should have known better.
What mess? A commission of the EU Parliament concluded that Georgians were the attackers. Russia was just not nice with the prisoners.
I think the semi-official Russian analysis is basically right on this occasion. Ukraine is an unexploded bomb, and nobody wants to be left holding it when it goes off. The Europeans want to be able to say, as the pieces come down, that they opposed all these concessions and that, if Ukraine had only had out for more for longer, then some miracle might have happened and the Russian regime would have collapsed, or something. And there is competition among European leaders to always have been the hardest-line, so they can’t be blamed. Unlike the US, they are going to have to live with the consequences of the defeat, and for decades at that. On the other hand, if Trump can somehow force Zelensky to agree to this dogs’ breakfast of a list, or something like it, the US can just walk away. Indeed, there’s nothing to stop Trump disengaging from the Ukraine problem quite soon, and saying to the Europeans “I’ve got Zelensky to agree to the basic ideas, now you fill in the details.”
The Atlantic Ocean, and the fact that the US government is driven largely by domestic priorities and pressures, mean that the Europeans have always been worried that the US would pull off an irresponsible stunt like this and leave them with the consequences. Now it actually appears to be happening, which is why this episode is far more about internal US-Europe relations than anything else. There isn’t going to be any massive increase in defence spending, or any rearmament, for reasons we’ve discussed before. The risk for Europe is not Russia, but the chaos Trump will leave if he’s allowed to walk away, and I think European leaders actually understand this.
And I just have to say that every time I look at this list I’m astonished by how amateurish it is. It’s not simply that the US is trying to commit other nations, and international organisations, to things, but most of the points are political commitments which may be reversed at any time, and some things are simply wrong: there’s no question of Ukraine signing the NPT, it did that in 1993. And a “security guarantee” for Ukraine would be meaningless unless it were backed by military force, which is the one thing the West doesn’t have. The whole thing is so unprofessional, it hurts.
Aurelien: I tend to agree with your observations. Here in Italy, trying to present Russia as a threat has taken some, errrrr, imagination on the part of the likes of Pina Picierno and Carlo Calenda. This morning, Marco Travaglio made a wisecrack in his column on the front page of Fatto Quotidiano about impending invasions of Sicily by — Madagascar.
So there is some good geographic realism in play in Italy.
This assertion, I am more skeptical about: “The Atlantic Ocean, and the fact that the US government is driven largely by domestic priorities and pressures, mean that the Europeans have always been worried that the US would pull off an irresponsible stunt like this and leave them with the consequences. ”
I would argue that the dismantling of Yugoslavia was the antipasto. Some Euro leaders, particularly the Germans, seem to have thought that with NATO and U.S. backing, they can reshape Central Europe. Some of the reshaping is by engulfing small countries into the EU (Slovakia, Cyprus (such as it is), Croatia). Some of the reshaping is shoring up improbable countries (Moldova, Kosova, Croatia).
Once the Ukraine war is over, it is quite possible that polities of the Balkan, especially from ex-Yugoslavia, which are economically and socially utterly putrefied (but held in the deep freezer, so it is not too noticeable) such as Bosnia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, or were rot is already extant, such as Albania, Montenegro, Serbia, will again erupt in an uncontrollable wave of violence (and demonstrate the total inanity of the EU-NATO peace enforcement and nation building approach).
It will be the new frontier to fight the Russians.
And at least as successful as Ukraine in getting people killed.
Any moment now, we will be celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the entry of IFOR into Bosnia, and the beginning of thirty years of “nation-building” efforts, which have cost unthinkable amounts of money and now resulted, as was inevitable, in renewed internal tensions. There are EU Ambassadors in Sarajevo who were at school in 1995. There are NGO workers who weren’t even born then. Which all goes to show that you can’t build a nation that doesn’t want to be built. Some of us said that thirty years ago, of course.
Exactly as planned.
Ah the Euro’s!
Seems breaking up Yugoslavia and Serbia was just rught.
But the kluge built from whole cloth by Lenin, Stalin and Krushjev for Soviet administrative convenience has sacred borders to be defended press ganged Kievans with all that US will give!
What;s Trump to do the Euro’s throw in three major points that Russia started the SMO to prevent.
Where is Euro’s finding the money, and materiel to raise and train up 800000?
Breaking up of Yugoslavia happened according to sacred Tito’s borders. Lenin, Stalin and Krushjev ones will also lose their venerated status after that part of the job is done, and additional freefrom turkey carving is to be done.
Aurelien: I think the semi-official Russian analysis is basically right on this occasion.
Yup.
I agree completely re the amateurishness. But so is everything this bunch does, from Hegseth to ICE Barbie to Bessent, with Rubio trying to act like an adult in this shit-show. Not that he is all that good, but you can get the sense that he knows this performance is embarrassing.
It’s not just that the draft is amateurish by the standards of diplomacy. It is that it is bad even by the more forgiving standards of commercial dealing. This isn’t a term sheet. It’s not a sort of letter of intent (non-binding outline of terms to hopefully be made final in a definitive agreement, as in detailed, carefully lawyered language). How can anyone who has worked with a lawyer on a contract have thought this was OK?
Totally agree. And the unprofessional, amateurish, incompetence may well be combined with certain cognitive disorders. I don’t agree with everything that Dr. Gartner says in his interview with Nima, but I think he does bring up some valid points that few want to acknowledge. The discussion is about DT, but the rest of the crew may have issues as well. If we haven’t reached peak kakistocracy yet, I shudder to think of what lies ahead…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQKHL7-nET4
Here’s another semi-official Russian analysis. A discussion between Glenn Diesen and Fyodor Lukyanov. It’s not as much about the 28-point plan but the Russian “endgame” we can expect.
Lukyanov’s main point, I guess, is that USA and EU think Russia’s demands (demilitarization, denazification and religious/linguistic freedom) are maximalist and subject to negotiations, while Russia considers them the absolute minimum. According to him both Kreml and Russians are convinced that eventually Ukraine will accept Russia’s conditions – not USA’s or EU’s, but Russia’s. Be it trough diplomacy or military operations, in the end Ukraine will submit.
Europe or countries in Europe (work that out) could take responsibility for their own security and then it wouldn’t matter what the USA does.
It doesn’t need to be or have anything around like the biggest army in the world to do that.
They need something more like the biggest diplomacy in the world (for lack of a better phrase at the moment).
The USA needs to learn not be so obsessed with selling weapons.
Don’y have much else to sell though…
It sucks all the air out of the room for anything else to breathe.
The convergence of the half-arsed Treaty of Nice 2001, making possible the entry of the Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia as a group on 2004, agreeing the centralising Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, and the financial crash of 2008, not to mention the halfbaked idea of completely pissing Russia off by offering Georgia and the Ukraine candidate status in 2008, were probably not the best ideas of which even the woodentops and wooly backs of an increasingly dim Western European political class that thought – and some of the more benighted souls amongst them might even still think – it would ever be possible to create a lasting and coherent Union when the internal politics of the post Soviet countries were profoundly unstable, whose economies would require decades of investment and emigration to bring them into line with the EU’s changing and increasingly abstract and absurd life style “values” let alone the European Court’s embracing of seemingly self expanding, all encompossing powers to interfere in the business and attempt to standardise the customs, mores and laws of countries with such remarkably rich and diverse cultures and histories and foundational myths.
Then when you take into account the economic vice of the Euro with it’s lack of flexibility allowing member governments to adapt to the continuing effects of the 2008 economic crisis, it was self-evident that some extremely over-confident, intellectually underpowered and utterly incompetent men and women, with little sense of reality and seemingly completely oblivious to the enormity of the problems they have created for themselves and the people they are supposed to represent, it was obvious that the EU was bound to fail.
Add in a proxy war and throw in your country’s treasure to feed the war – whilst your own people suffer from malnutrition and children go to school hungry only to arrive home to go to bed hungry – in order to support more than one band of thieves, grifters and bullshit jobsters, not to mention 10% to the Big Guy – and you get what we have.
A change is going to come, to quote the mighty Sam Cooke, and the only form of effective European association that will be able to survive is that of a straightforward Western European trading group rather like the original EEC, with each member country with absolute control over her own currency and laws.
And to observe the cretinous Merz, Macron and Starmer, gathering to play toy soldiers and lead the fight against the finest, most well-blooded military – possibly in the history of the world – just highlights to us how ridiculous the whole tragic business of not going with the original propopsals which were leading to an amicable agreement in Istanbul, not to mention the West deliberately supporting and working hard for the failure of Minsk I and 2.
First, yes, NATO has already started to come apart and the EU is redeveloping its north/south divide.
But mainly I comment in order to say: Chapeau! Your combination of factual historical density, acid critique, and sentence/paragraph structure is enviable.
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(I agree with “straightforward Western European trading group rather like the original EEC” so long as we understand ‘trading group’ to mean cartel coordination.)
Trump wins again; the booby prize!
The idea of stealing Russia’s investments to pay for the West’s bumbling malfeasance is a loser.
Congratulations, Mr President. The mirror doesn’t lie. History will remember you.
My understanding is the Russians have already claimed foreign assets (‘McDonalds’ business infrastructure) to offset the US steal.
Just wanted to mention in passing that Iuliia Mendel is not just “a Ukrainian” – she used to be Zelenski’s press secretary no less.
Thank you!
Who Leaked The Plan?
Moon of Alabama, among others believe that Witkoff’s quickly-deleted tweet saying ‘It must have come from K’, means he thought Keith Kellogg was the leak. Kellog was apparently replaced shortly after the leak. Other accounts think K refers to Kiril Dimitriev
A silly 28-point peace plan (to borrow a line from Clemenceau, even God only needed 10 points to get the job done), a UKR corruption scandal that just won’t go away, multiple European governments on the brink of oblivion, Trump’s approval ratings probing new depths, global financial markets going wobbly while Keynes’ barbarous relic shines brightly, and meanwhile RU continues its slow grinding inexorable advance…..
I have long believed that Trump will ultimately throw UKR under the proverbial bus and dump Project UKR on the Europeans, but he keeps proving me wrong (much as I keep expecting Putin to take off the gloves and dial the SMO up to 11…..but he never does). At a certain point, the political statute of limitations will expire and Project UKR will become Trump’s baby. This current peace plan (more a collection of inchoate ideas than an actual plan of action) might very well be Trump’s last chance to pull the ripcord and exit stage left; otherwise, he’ll be locked in for good and might do something really stupid that involves the USA in an epic disaster.
For all the current hoopla, I don’t expect anything to change this winter (for which I’ve already booked my tickets to Moscow, after having carefully checked the December strike schedule here in ever more restive Italy). Trump will keep making noises, UKR will keep grifting and shooting drones at RU, the EU will pass more virtue-signaling sanctions, and RU will keep grinding on.
I’m afraid that’s the best we can hope for this winter season.
4. A dialogue will be held between Russia and Nato, mediated by the United States
The obvious problem here is that the mediator is a member of one of the parties to the dialogue. Once again, we see Trump and co. treating NATO as something more like a EUTO — an entity the US is not really involved in.
27. This agreement … will be monitored and guaranteed by the Peace Council, headed by President Donald Trump.
This “Peace Council” is spoken of as if it is something which already exists as a formal, authoritative institution. It has all the legitimacy of The Human Fund.
The list as a whole does have the quality of something scribbled out on a bar napkin somewhere into the second (or third) bottle of vodka.
This part really strikes me as ridiculous:
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.
b. The United States will enter into a long-term economic co-operation agreement for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centres, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities.
c. Russia will be invited to rejoin the G8.
Was this part ghost written by Larry Fink, or Lindsay Graham? The whole point of Russia’s pivoting to China, getting off the dollar, finding alternative trade platforms, etc. was to remove themselves from the western financial system, and “sanctions-proof” their economy, or at least contain the potential damage. Putin has spoken at great lengths about the end of the “uni-polar” world and no more playing “vampire ball.”
Having successfully managed to weather the “bone crushing” sanctions and forge newer, healthier relationships with China and India, going back to the old ways of doing business would be like a reformed alcoholic deciding to go back to hitting the bottle.
Russia would be walking back into a giant trap. It also reads as if it was ghost written by Lindsey Graham in the sense of having the assumption that Russia is really suffering in any sense from sanctions, and is just dying to get back in the club.
If I’m a Russian, this is the easiest section to strike, although as Aurelien pointed out, it’s all amateurish and meaningless political commitments that are unenforceable.
Another fun one:
10(4). If Ukraine launches a missile at Moscow or St Petersburg without cause, the security guarantee will be deemed invalid.
If they launch a missile towards any other location within Russia, that would be OK. And drones are permitted to target anywhere in Russia.
This whole doc is full of yuks!
One very minor detail which might be nothing — this list is courtesy of the British Telegraph, and note how “St” in St Petersburg lacks the closing period according to the American convention. Transcribed? Interpreted? And whom did they receive the “original” from?
In fact, Russia should reinterpret pt 4 such that US will no longer be part of NATO, no US assets left on the east of the Atlantic. (/s)
I have thought this mediation and monitoring is a bit like a mediation session with your ex-spouse. You walk into the room and discover the mediator is your ex-father-in-law who never did approve of you.
This sort of thing is embarrassingly bad.
Thanks for this article. I make an effort to watch the American MSM nightly news, and the way this is being reported, and the reactions (in comments or interviews) is indicative of a news story that has been reported so wrong for so long that average Americans are astonished that it looks like Ukraine is being forced to accept this “surrender” peace plan despite the fact Ukraine is winning the war.
Even more astonishing is that Western/EU elites that should have all the means at their fingertips to learn the truth about what’s actually happening in Ukraine seem to believe what by now should be an obvious complete fairy tale. If I had to choose between competent liars and incompetent boobs running the show, I think I’d lean towards the competent liars because even they would be backing away from the stupidity I’m looking at now.
I’m kinda fond of the “Nato will not station troops in Ukraine” one.
I was “stationed” just outside of Mannheim (or TongDuChon).
But I sure spent substantial amounts of my time in other parts of Germany (or Korea). So if the trains taking us to Hohenfels just ran a weeeeee bit longer into Lvov, that’s still not “stationed,” right.
And properly planned field training exercises can take weeks. Or months. Why, you could have replacements actually processing into and out of units that were still just “in the field, not stationed there.”
I am not as pessimistic about the 28 points. The Wall Street Journal and the Neocons have rightly pointed out that they contain the most important concessions that Russia wants. Furthermore Selensky’s latest adress to the Ukrainian people is ambiguous but not an outright rejection.
Surely the Euros want the war to continue to stay in power but they know very well that the game is up if the US stays out. They can neither supply money, nor armaments and I am confident they will not send troops.
The Russian reaction is ambiguous as well but also not an outright rejection.
Finally: the Russians don´t only have Ukraine to worry about. China is not the great friend. States have interests and surely Russia becoming an economic appendix to China is not in Russia’s interest. On the 1997 issue of the 5000 Ruble note there’s a certain Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky who in the 19th century secured a big chunk of China for the Russian empire and her successor states.
There is brewing trouble in the Caucasus, China is squeezing out Russia out of Central Asia a.s.o.
The 28 points will become moot if there’s peace. Because then the current govs in Europe will fall and the current EU leadership with it.
Rubio was in the room this past weekend with the Kievan troopers which came up with the 24 points sustaining a number of reasons Russian Federation launched 100,000 soldiers toward Kiev!
What was Rubio there doing? That suggests two options Rubio and marqued diplomats are inept, or Trump does not hold to what Dmetriev and Witkoff did with Kushner help!
Such amateurs twiddling winks with hundreds of thermonuclear weapons in the bag!
None of them should be involved in setting the shape of the table at a peace conference.
The SMO will roll.
Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky…it’s also said that he suggested that Alaska be ceded to the United States.
And he spent the last decades of his life living in Paris, where he was originally buried until the 1990s.
My uninformed opinion is that the war will continue until the last Ukrainian and mercenary is eliminated because of the need to continue the circular flow of money into all the right and wrong rice bowls.
After all, the US just sent a few ATACMS into pre 2014 Russia.