🔗 Share this article

Initially, Donald Trump gave the impression to take a strong approach on the Ukrainian conflict. Following making statements of "severe repercussions" in August if Putin continued obstructing truce talks, the former president eventually introduced substantial sanctions on Russia's biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. This action significantly impacted Putin's capacity to fund his military invasion in the region.

But, via his recently unveiled comprehensive peace proposal for the conflict, reportedly created by both nations' diplomats lacking Ukrainian or EU input, Trump has clearly returned to his favorable to Russia approach.

Favoring Military Action

Trump's initiative would effectively reward Putin for invading Ukraine while placing the country's democracy in peril. Despite bold statements that "Ukraine's autonomy will be confirmed", much of the plan actually weaken that essential sovereignty. This constitutes a Russian ideal would certainly be a catastrophe for the nation.

Showing his business background, the former president persists to view the situation in Ukraine as a mere border issue, implying ceding Russia a part of Ukrainian territory will satisfy the ruler. Yet, Russia's war is not only about occupying a destroyed region of deindustrialized territory in Ukraine's east. Rather, it is about the nation's democracy – and Putin's apparent desire to eliminate it so it stops serves as an appealing example for the Russia's population of the democratic leadership that Putin's growing dictatorship denies them.

Border Giveaways

Although maintaining in position the currently divided Ukrainian provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, Trump's plan would force the nation to give up all of Donetsk region. In addition to rewarding the Russian Federation with area that its military have been unsuccessful to capture in more than a decade of fighting, this surrender would leave Ukraine's military defenses critically weakened.

This region is the place of the nation's highly-touted "defensive line", the well-established defensive positions that represent a key impediment to Russian advances. Trump would have the Ukrainian military surrender these defenses, providing Russian forces a clear route to the capital should he eventually choose to resume the hostilities.

Defense Restrictions

Then, in a action that would enable renewed conflict more feasible for Russia, the plan would force the nation to reduce the size of its armed forces from their present 800,000 to 850,000 soldiers to a limit of 600,000. Significantly, the proposal places no such constraints on the invading army.

Seemingly as a gesture to Russia's efforts to depict Ukraine's legitimate government as Nazis, Trump's proposal declares: "Every Nazi belief system and actions must be condemned and forbidden." As if to emphasize this point, it demands that "The nation will hold democratic votes in 100 days" of a ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, the proposal sets no condition that Putin endanger his authoritarian rule by conducting democratic processes in Russia.

Defense Commitments

Certainly, the initiative makes Russia promise not to "invade other states" and to "enshrine in legislation its position of non-aggression towards European nations and Ukraine". However considering that the Russian leadership has broken comparable treaties in the previous instances – for example the 1994 agreement, in which Russia pledged to honor the nation's borders in return for surrendering its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, and the Minsk accords, in which Russia agreed to a truce and a restoration of captured territory in the region to Ukrainian control – why should we trust this commitment on this occasion?

For this reason Ukraine has been so determined on international security guarantees. Although the plan warns of a "strong joint defense action" should the Russian Federation restart its aggression, and provides that "Ukraine will receive dependable security guarantees", the particulars vary from fuzzy to troubling. The plan would not just block the nation alliance membership but also prevent alliance nations from positioning military personnel on the nation's land, effectively blocking the peacekeeping contingent, presumptively commanded by European powers, on which the Ukrainian government had been relying to prevent Russia from replenishing his diminished troops, re-equipping, and attacking again.

World Concern

Another supplementary accord reportedly would grant Ukraine with a alliance-like protection assurance, in which any later "major, planned, and continuous military assault" by Russia on Ukraine "will be treated as an attack endangering the stability and safety of the transatlantic community." This implies a defense action. But in contrast to a powerful Ukrainian military – Ukraine's best defense against additional Russian aggression – the effectiveness of the parallel accord would rely on the willingness of Western powers, like Trump, to react with force to Russia's aggression, a response they have {not