Members of Congress who have talked to Secretary of State Marco Rubio say he told them that the U.S. plan to bring about a ceasefire in Ukraine is not the U.S. plan.
The Associated Press reports, “Lawmakers critical of President Donald Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war said Saturday they spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio who told them that the peace plan Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept is a ‘wish list’ of the Russians and not the actual proposal offering Washington’s positions.”
Welp. In the immortal words of Defense Secretary Albert Nimziki from the movie Independence Day, “That’s not entirely accurate.”
A spokesman for the State Department called the report “blatantly false.”
So what else is new?
Actually, the administration seems to be a little off balance after the virulent reaction from the media to the proposal to end the fighting.
Trump’s deal “would require Ukraine to shrink the size of its military from its current 850,000 to 600,000, enshrine in its constitution that it will not seek to join NATO, and give ‘de facto recognition'” of Russia’s conquest of “‘Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as of the areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia it has illegally seized, with the conflict in these regions frozen on the current front line,” according to the Washington Post.
Obviously, the deal is tilted toward Russia. The hysterical overreaction in the media to the proposal says more about the media’s TDS than about the deal’s efficacy.
“Trump’s Neville Chamberlain Prize,” sneers New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
The Telegraph, in their usual understated way, accused Trump of being a “Russian asset.”
“Trump and Witkoff Try to Get Russia a Win,” snarls Arc Digital. Russia needs the help of neither man to accomplish what, for all intents and purposes, is a fait accompli.
First, it should be noted that this is a leaked document, by no means a finished product, that the Ukrainian government hasn’t even had time to read.
Second, why in the name of all that is good and holy should the U.S. propose and Russia accept a deal that favors Ukraine when Kyiv is clearly losing the war?
It’s hysterical, anti-Trump rhetoric that equates ending the war by proposing a realistic peace with a Ukraine “surrender.”
Trump’s 28-point plan is not set in stone. Trump’s usual demand for a quick deal (he wants Ukraine to accept the deal before Thanksgiving or he’ll pull all U.S. support) is window dressing. He knows any agreement will have to be carefully negotiated.
There’s also a sweeping NATO-like security guarantee that would require the U.S. and other European signatories to come to Ukraine’s aid if Russia begins a “sustained offensive” in the country. That guarantee is not likely to survive in any final agreement, given that the U.S. Congress is adamantly opposed to sending U.S. troops to fight a war against Russia.
It’s fine to posture about the courageous Ukrainians fighting to maintain their sovereignty. I admire their pluck. For three years, they’ve fought off an army three times their size and vastly better equipped. They’ve inflicted more than a million casualties on Russian troops and are killing or wounding more than 1,000 a month. Russian President Vladimir Putin is scraping the bottom of the barrel for draftees and has even pressed his allies in Syria and North Korea to supply cannon fodder for his war of conquest.
If Russia were a democracy, the people would have already risen up and demanded an end to the war. But Russia is an autocracy, and Putin is bound and determined to achieve his war aims.
Russia has already conquered about 20% of Ukrainian territory and is continuing to advance at about 170 square miles a month, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
To recognize Russian conquests in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk is facing reality. Whose going to dislodge Russian troops from those territories? How is Ukraine’s exhausted military, outmanned and outgunned, supposed to recapture thousands of square miles of territory?
Most importantly, why would Putin give any of the territories he’s illegally conquered back to Ukraine? What’s in it for him? Lifting sanctions? He’s already found ways to evade the worst of them.
At the same time, Ukraine has demonstrated to Putin in no uncertain terms that Russia cannot conquer it. The best Putin can do is take a little more of Eastern Ukraine, including Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Other than that, the slaughter of his troops will continue.
The months ahead will see some hard bargaining by Ukraine as it seeks to get guarantees of its sovereignty. Putin would dearly love a respite to give his military a chance to rearm and reset.
Yes, the leaked deal favors Russia. But what kind of deal could Ukraine get six months from now, or in a year, when Russia has conquered another thousand square miles of Ukrainian territory?
Ukraine should take a deal now, rearm and refresh its army, and trust that its future will see better times.
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