A new “secret plan” by the U.S. and Russia, Turkish mediation, and Europe’s fear that the trail of the war money will be exposed
Nearly four years after the start of the war, the story is returning to where it could have been back in the spring of 2022: at the negotiating table between Washington and Moscow — this time with Turkey and Qatar — and without Europe in the front row. A leaked draft of a 28-point U.S.–Russian peace plan, written with Russian input, proposes a settlement that forces dramatic concessions from Ukraine while largely affirming what Russia has already seized. In this framework, Zelensky is seeking Erdoğan’s mediation, while Europe keeps repeating “no capitulation” — but offers no realistic alternative. It is precisely this gap — between U.S.–Russian deal-making and Europe’s wartime narrative — that now defines Kyiv’s future.
What exactly is in the draft? In short: Ukraine would withdraw from the remaining part of the Donbas still under its control, allowing Russia to gain de facto control over the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The lines in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would be “frozen,” with the possibility that Moscow returns smaller, less important pockets of territory, but keeps key strongholds in the south. Crimea would, in practice, be accepted by the West as Russian, although Kyiv would not need to formally recognize it. About one-fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory would thus remain under Russian control — what Kyiv considers illegally occupied becomes, in the Western plan, the new normal.
The second component is demilitarization: Ukraine’s army would be cut in half, to about 400,000 troops, giving up entire categories of weaponry — above all long-range missiles and drones capable of striking deep inside Russia. This is a very concrete realization of what Moscow has called from the outset the “demilitarization of Ukraine.” Western military aid would shrink in line with these new limits. Ukraine would formally accept neutrality — that is, no NATO membership — while the Russian language would become a second official language and the Russian Orthodox Church’s branch in Ukraine would receive a special status. Everything that in recent years was labeled “Russian propaganda” now suddenly appears in the draft of an American peace plan.
In return, Washington promises security guarantees for Ukraine: a kind of defensive shield, but not at the level of NATO’s Article 5. In theory, the U.S. would commit to intervene if Russia attacks again; in practice, everyone remembers the Budapest Memorandum and Ukraine’s surrender of nuclear weapons for “guarantees” that collapsed in 2014. The plan also envisions demilitarized zones in the Donbas from which Ukraine would withdraw and into which Russian forces would formally be prohibited from entering. But cities like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk would sit right next to Russia’s line, without deep defenses. Strategically, it looks like a pause for Moscow, not long-term protection for Kyiv.
The people pushing this plan are interesting as well. Trump, who entered the White House with a promise to “end the war very quickly,” authorized a close business associate as his special envoy, while on the Russian side not only diplomats but the head of a state fund — Putin’s long-time unofficial channel to the West — is involved. They met in Miami and effectively mapped out a new security architecture for Ukraine, Europe, and Washington–Moscow relations “in a four-eyes meeting.” At the same time, the U.S. Secretary of the Army — accompanied by generals — arrives in Kyiv, one of the most unusual “diplomatic” visits in recent history, to explain to Zelensky that the time for ceasefire talks has come. While the contours of peace are being drawn in Miami and Ankara, Berlin, Paris, and Brussels are learning about it mostly from the media.
Zelensky, however, did not participate in drafting the plan. His negotiator received an oral briefing on the 28 points only after the Americans and Russians had already agreed on them among themselves. Publicly, Zelensky says that only the U.S. and the American president have the power to end the war — a polite but crystal-clear message about who holds the key. At the same time, unofficial assessments from Kyiv say the plan follows Russia’s maximalist demands almost entirely and is “unacceptable without major changes.” Whatever he says on camera, Zelensky knows well that signing such a document could mean political ruin — and perhaps something worse.
At home, his position is further undermined by a new corruption scandal hitting the military sector and his inner circle. It involves shady contracts, kickbacks, and profiteering in the middle of war — a scenario that the Ukrainian public, though used to an oligarchic model, sees as betrayal. Parliament is dismissing ministers, and the media speculate whether the investigation will reach the president himself. In such an atmosphere, “war until victory” sounds increasingly unconvincing, and space opens for something else: distancing from Europe. Because once European capitals start asking “where did our billions go,” Kyiv will have to choose — to act as the obedient scapegoat or try to shift blame onto its donors.
Europe is already putting itself in a strange position. On one side, the official line is that no imposed territorial concessions are acceptable and that peace must be “just.” Poland and the Baltic states are especially vocal, as is London. On the other side, these same allies — together with Brussels — have spent two and a half years repeating the mantra that there can be no talks with Russia, that the aim is the “strategic defeat of Moscow,” and that Ukraine must not accept any kind of “Minsk 3.” Every serious negotiation attempt — from Istanbul 2022 onward — was either ignored or actively undermined. The result: the current peace draft starts from Russia’s military reality on the ground, not from idealistic European declarations.
That is why this plan, as uncomfortable as it is for Kyiv, is also an uncomfortable mirror for Europe’s elites. It shows what happens when two nuclear powers — the U.S. and Russia — decide they are done with a war that drains resources and attention, and Europe is left as a bystander. If Washington and Moscow truly reach a settlement, Brussels will wake up in a world where Europe’s new eastern security border was not defined in Berlin or Paris but in Anchorage, Miami, and Ankara. A continent that sacrificed its industry and energy sector for the sake of “helping Ukraine” may discover that it ultimately accepted an outcome that was on the table even before mass mobilization, sanctions, and the energy shock.
For Moscow, the draft is, unsurprisingly, “very comfortable.” It confirms territorial gains, entrenches a neutral and permanently weakened Ukraine, and restores Russia to the same negotiating table with the U.S. as an indispensable European power. At the same time, the Kremlin can continue its familiar game: officially claiming there is no plan until it arrives via “official channels,” unofficially testing red lines in Washington and Kyiv, and maintaining pressure at the front to raise the cost of any Ukrainian “no.” Unlike Europe, Russia has at least articulated clearly what it wants — one reason why almost all points of the peace draft are essentially its demands, translated into diplomatic English.
Where does this leave Zelensky, and can he break free from Europe’s war narrative? His trip to Ankara and insistence on Erdoğan as mediator suggest he sees precisely who still has real influence over the Kremlin and who merely gives speeches in Brussels. If the U.S. and Russia continue to push for a ceasefire, and the EU remains trapped in its own maximalist stance of “not an inch to Russia,” it is not impossible that Kyiv will start quietly distancing itself from the European camp. One of Zelensky’s few political escape routes might be exactly that: to say he is saving what can still be saved, while Europe pushes him into a war that has long ceased to make sense for Ukraine but has made perfect sense for Western military-industrial complexes.
The fundamental question, of course, remains: how sustainable is such a peace? A plan that takes territory from Ukraine, downsizes its military, intrudes into its linguistic, religious, and internal political spheres, and grants the key security concessions to Russia and the U.S. does not look like a recipe for long-term stability. It resembles a pause between two wars rather than a real end to the conflict. But precisely because the alternative is the continuation of a grinding war dictated by Europe’s hawks, such an “imperfect peace” will increasingly appear as the only concrete scenario. For Ukrainians, for Russians, and for Europeans, who will finally have to confront their own responsibility — not only for how the war began, but for all the moments when peace was possible and they consciously chose to sabotage it.
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