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At first, Donald Trump appeared to embrace a firm position concerning Ukraine. After delivering warnings of "severe consequences" in August if Russia's president carried on obstructing peace negotiations, Trump ultimately introduced major restrictions on Russia's biggest energy firms, Rosneft and Lukoil. This decision seriously impacted the Russian leader's capability to finance his aggression in Ukraine.

However, via his recently unveiled comprehensive peace plan for the conflict, that was created by American and Russian representatives without Ukraine's or EU input, he has apparently returned to his favorable to Russia position.

Benefiting Military Action

This initiative would in practice favor the Russian leader for invading Ukraine while placing the country's democracy in danger. Although bold proclamations that "Ukraine's independence will be affirmed", much of the initiative actually undermine that same autonomy. What represents a Moscow's wish would probably be a Ukrainian nightmare.

Showing his business background, the former president continues to view the war as a mere land disagreement, as if handing Putin a part of Ukrainian territory will please the leader. Yet, Putin's invasion is not merely about occupying a charred area of deindustrialized area in the Donbas region. It is about the nation's democracy – and Putin's clear desire to destroy it so it stops serves as an appealing model for the Russia's population of the democratic leadership that his growing autocracy denies them.

Land Concessions

Although keeping in position the presently split Ukrainian provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the initiative would require Ukraine to abandon all of Donetsk province. Aside from favoring the Russian Federation with land that its military have been unable to seize in more than a lengthy period of warfare, this surrender would leave Ukraine's defensive positions severely compromised.

Donetsk is the site of Ukraine's well-known "defensive line", the fortified military defenses that constitute a essential barrier to invading forces. Trump would have the Ukrainian military abandon these defenses, leaving Putin a clear route to Kyiv if he eventually choose to restart the war.

Armed Forces Reductions

Furthermore, in a step that would enable future fighting more feasible for Russia, the plan would mandate Ukraine to reduce the scale of its troops from their present large number troops to a limit of 600,000. Significantly, the initiative imposes no such constraints on Russian forces.

Seemingly as a gesture to Putin's campaign to portray the nation's democratically elected leadership as extremists, Trump's proposal asserts: "All radical belief system and practices must be opposed and banned." Seemingly to underscore this aspect, it requires that "The nation will hold elections in 100 days" of a peace deal. Meanwhile, the proposal imposes no condition that Putin endanger his dictatorship by holding votes in his own country.

Protection Guarantees

To be sure, the initiative makes the Russian Federation pledge not to "attack neighboring countries" and to "enshrine in regulation its policy of non-violence towards European nations and Ukraine". But considering that Putin has breached comparable accords in the history – such as the 1994 Budapest memorandum, in which the Russian government pledged to respect the nation's sovereignty in exchange for giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, and the previous peace deals, in which Russia committed to a truce and a return of captured territory in the region to Kyiv – for what reason should anyone trust Putin now?

This explains the Ukrainian government has been so insistent on external protection assurances. While the proposal promises a "decisive unified defense action" should the Russian Federation renew its aggression, and states that "The nation will receive reliable protection assurances", the specifics include unclear to concerning. The proposal would not only deny Ukraine accession to NATO but also preclude Nato members from stationing forces on Ukraine's soil, thus blocking the peacekeeping contingent, likely commanded by European powers, on which Ukraine had been relying to prevent Putin from restoring his reduced military, rearming, and reinvading.

International Response

Another parallel deal according to sources would provide Ukraine with a Nato-style defense commitment, in which any future "significant, deliberate, and sustained aggression" by the Russian Federation on the country "will be treated as an attack jeopardizing the peace and security of the allied countries." That suggests a defense action. Yet in contrast to a strong Ukrainian military – Ukraine's primary protection against renewed invasion – the credibility of the parallel accord would rely on the willingness of Nato leaders, such as the US administration, to react through arms to Russia's attacks, an action they have {not