Trump’s 'Peace' Plan Means More War

Myroslava voices Ukraine’s fear that the new US peace plan resembles capitulation. Despite fatigue and losses, the Counteroffensive team believes a just peace is possible only on Ukrainian terms.

People stand near the site of a Russian aerial bombing on the shopping pavilions on November 21, 2025 in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. (Photo by Anastasia Potapenko/Suspilne Ukraine/JSC “UA:PBC”/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images).

8 a.m. on a Friday. The first morning this week, my son finally lets me sleep a little longer.

A rare breath of peace before the weekend.

I reach for my phone, open the news feed, and feel the air drain from my lungs.

Ukraine would permanently give up its territories. Russia would be granted amnesty for its war crimes.

Terrifying, isn’t it?

But this isn’t a nightmare or some fringe conspiracy.

It’s written, plainly, coldly, in a proposed peace plan from the Trump team.

When the American press published a list of 28 points of a possible peace plan, many Ukrainians felt not relief, but anxiety. The document rather resembles a capitulation scenario that returns influence to Russia and leaves Ukraine in fear of the future, especially against the backdrop of an escalating political crisis and a deteriorating situation at the front.

The Counteroffensive team speaks unanimously: accepting such terms is impossible. They not only endanger Ukraine but also weaken the security of all of Europe – and each day of delay only makes this risk greater.

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According to the draft peace plan, obtained by Axios, Ukraine must give up part of its territories, limit the size of its army, and enshrine in the Constitution a refusal to join NATO.

The agreement was developed by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner with consultations with Russian representative Kirill Dmitriev.

Some phrases in the U.S. peace proposal for Ukraine were likely originally written in Russian, The Guardian noticed. For example, the third point: “It is expected that Russia will not invade and NATO will not expand” - the passive construction ‘It is expected’ mirrors the Russian ‘ожидается’ (ozhidaetsya). The text also contains other Russianisms, such as ‘ambiguities’ (неоднозначности/neodnoznachnosti) and ‘to enshrine’ (закрепить/zakrepit’).

Here are the key points of the peace agreement proposed by the US:

1. Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognized as de facto Russian, including by the United States.

2. It is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries and NATO will not expand further.

3. Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees, though how was not spelled out

4. The size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be limited to 600,000 personnel.

5. The Zaporizhzhia 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.

6. Ukraine will hold elections in 100 days.

All these points look like some kind of surreal mockery of Ukrainians, and the price they pay for Ukraine to exist. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy stated the country may face a difficult choice: lose dignity or lose a key partner.

“Either the difficult 28 points, or an extremely hard winter, the hardest one, and further risks,” Zelenskyy said.

In 2014, when Russia first invaded Eastern Ukraine, I was 14 years old. Back then, I was a little girl for whom the war was too far away, as we lived in Kyiv. Still, despite this, my family always mentioned that we were living here, rejoicing, celebrating holidays only because Ukrainian soldiers were fighting there, in the East.

Perhaps the tragedy that struck me most as a child was Ilovaisk in August 2014, in Donetsk region, an important railway junction. Ukrainian troops found themselves encircled by pro-Russian forces and the regular Russian army. Despite an agreement on a ‘green corridor’ for withdrawal, Russian forces opened fire on columns of Ukrainian soldiers. Hundreds killed and wounded, thousands of shocked families. This tragedy became known as the ‘Ilovaisk cauldron.’ It is a symbol that Russia cannot be trusted in either peaceful or military agreements.

August 29, 2014, 6:52 am. The convoy is standing in the private sector of Mnohopillya, waiting for the command to leave through the “green corridor”. The photo shows a Russian T-72 tank “squeezed” in battle. Ukrainian tankers were leaving on it. Photo by Maks Levin. Source: https://projects.lb.ua/afterilovaisk_filin

I always thought about how it was for the military, volunteers, photographers who ended up encircled there, and how it was for ordinary people, residents of that city. What is it like when you’ve lost your home, job, money, your former life...

The same thought struck my mind when I read this draft peace agreement. I immediately thought of our colleague Sashko Matviienko, lead defense reporter at our sister publication The Arsenal. He’s from the Donetsk region, a small town called Shakhtarsk. He had to flee the Russians for half of his life: firstly, as a teenager when he escaped the occupied city, then Kharkiv when the full-scale war broke out.

Now Trump is proposing that Russia pay rent for his native Donbas, but what good is that to him if he’ll never see his home again, which will become part of Russia.

Sashko and his brother in Shakhtarsk, 2001.

“I’m sick of all of this nonsense. Why will Russia pay some kind of rent for ‘controlling’ the Donetsk region [my hometown region], if they already included Donetsk into the Russian constitution? Ukraine cannot cross-read lines – reducing its army, declining its path to NATO and recognizing the occupation of any territories,” Sashko said.

Russia never keeps its promises. One need only recall the Minsk agreements, which we wrote about earlier.

Ukrainians are promised reliable security guarantees, but from whom and what kind exactly? This is literally the key point - we want to be convinced that Russia won’t attack us again, but how can we be sure this will never happen?

“My son did not die for us to give up territories. My son is such a tiny drop in the sea of the fallen who gave their lives. So no concessions… Either die, or live not as slaves,” Olena Lazorenko, a medical worker, told The Counteroffensive.

Ukraine’s greatest security guarantee has always been and remains its army - strong, brave people ready to defend our land. And the thought that under this agreement we are required to limit it seems terrible and unreal to me.

It’s especially hard to watch all this news now that I have a son.

He’s so tiny, and I want to protect him from all evil, but I don’t know how to do it. Every new plan, every message about a threat makes me wonder: should I go abroad, stay here, or build a house with a bunker and try to create at least some protection in this world? These thoughts give me no peace, because the life of this little person has now become my main responsibility, and fear for his future is constantly nearby.

“As the cold approaches, for yet another year it feels like the world is losing its mind. Ukraine is once again entering a stage where, here and now, the direction of history is being decided. We are back in Groundhog Day. It is a plan of complete defeat,” said Mariana Lastovyria, Creative Editor of The Counteroffensive.

Ukraine was strong enough to win this war at the beginning, believes Oleksandra Malysheva, children’s tutor and volunteer for the Ukrainian army. But now the situation was intentionally brought to a critical state, like a disease - anorexia.

“The plan is bullshit, the future perspective as well. Sorry, I got heated,” Oleksandra said.

Ukrainian rescue personnel operate at the site of a heavily damaged residential building following a Russian air strike in the city of Ternopil, on November 20, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Photo by VLADYSLAV MUSIIENKO/AFP via Getty Images).

Trump has said that he wants this agreement – negotiated without the Ukrainians between the U.S. and Russia – signed by Thursday.

“It’s the end of the year... Trump needs to show a victory amid the [Epstein] scandal,” Kraiev said.

And perhaps this is still just talk for now, Ukrainians don’t know what to expect. There have been many peace plans already, but this one raises particular concern, given the internal energy corruption scandal involving top political figures that weakens Ukraine’s position, and the wave of young people leaving the country, says The Counteroffensive journalist Nastia Kryvoruchenko.

“A lot of young people are leaving the country. A huge amount of my peers have already left – who I went to school with, who I once was friends with. It gives a sense of hopelessness,” Nastia said.

Nastia’s words about the feeling of loss echo my own. Especially since the Russians on purpose, blew up the Kakhovka dam in the Zaporizhzhia region in June 2023, to disrupt the Ukrainian counteroffensive. With the water, a whole part of my childhood disappeared. My grandparents’ countryside house was there.

Early in the morning, my grandfather would go there to catch fish to make me breakfast. I would promise to go with him every time, but he always protected my sleep.

During the day we would go swimming at the local beach near the railway. Trains to Crimea often ran there... When I saw them, I would always run out of the water and wave to everyone until the long train of happy people passed into the distance, probably on vacation.

My granddad and me in Crimea, 2007.

The bottom was strewn with rough stones, I would enter the water in slippers, and my grandfather would go barefoot, yelping and laughing at the same time. Those were summers filled with warmth, protection, and joy.

Now there’s no grandfather, who died a year before the full-scale war.

No countryside house, which was practically destroyed by the Russians.

No Kakhovka reservoir itself - as if a whole piece was torn from my life.

This house is very close to Zaporizhzhia, where I was born, and now it’s unknown what will happen to the city.

Despite the exhaustion and uncertainty, Nastia calls the very fact that Ukraine continues to fight and has endured these years a true miracle. And it became possible thanks to the incredible Ukrainian military and civilians who held the country up.

Their sacrifices and struggle, she says, deserve a much fairer peace than what the United States is offering today.

“Since childhood, I have watched the struggle for freedom and the right to exist as an independent state unfold before my eyes. If we sign this now, we will simply be spitting at the cemeteries holding the graves of those whose lives were taken by Russia,” Mariana added.

Ukraine must stand firm.

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ZELENSKY: ‘HARDEST MOMENT’ -- LOSE U.S. SUPPORT OR DIGNITY: The 28 point plan that the U.S. and Russia proposed led to a speech by Zelenskyy, in which he appeared willing to negotiate along these terms.

“Either the difficult 28 points, or an extremely harsh winter. A life without freedom, without dignity, without justice. And to trust someone who has already attacked us twice,” he said.

Zelenskyy delivers a speech on Friday.

As you can see from the Ground News stats on this topic, most of the coverage about how Ukraine would be forced to concede territory is coming from the left, making it what the news aggregator calls a ‘Blindspot’ for the right.

PUTIN HASN’T BACKED PLAN: Putin said Friday that the 28 point plan “has not been discussed with us in any substantive way,” per Meduza, but that it could become “the basis for a final peace settlement.”

UMEROV: UKRAINE CONSIDERING PROPOSAL: Rustem Umerov, the Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council says that Ukraine was “studying“ the proper proposal, which limits Ukraine’s military to 600K troops. Ukraine has about 880,000 soldiers on active duty, Zelenskyy said earlier this year.

UKRAINE-JFK ASSASSINATION FACT: This Saturday marks the anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in Dallas Texas. The most famous video footage of the incident was taken by a man named Abraham Zapruder, in what became known as the Zapruder film. Here’s the Ukraine connection: Zapruder was born in Kovel, part of the Volyn Oblast of Ukraine, before immigrating to the United States in 1920. Forty years later, he would become perhaps the most famous witness of that American tragedy.

DOG OF WAR:

Nastia met this dog in a café when she met up with her friends. The dog was really friendly and asked Nastia for some pets.

Stay safe out there.

Best,
Myroslava