Why the 28-Point “Plan” on Ukraine Can’t be Considered Serious

The plan forces Ukraine to make many concessions, while at the same time providing wide-ranging benefits for Russia (including complete absolution of material and legal responsibility for the aggression), in return for zero concessions from Russia.

Historically, such peace deals are made when one side de-facto loses militarily, and has no other option but to make major concessions, and the other is decisively winning, and doesn’t have to concede anything.

This is nowhere near what is actually happening on the battlefield. Ukraine is capable of defending itself and striking deep inside Russian territory; these capabilities are acknowledged by the Kremlin, and even reflected in the text of the “plan.” Putin’s available resources are rapidly depleting. Since the Spring of 2022, Russia has not been able to make strategic gains in this war for 3,5 years. Recent limited tactical gains have been achieved by Russia at enormous human and material cost, rendering such offensive tactic unsustainable.

Russia has been trying to capture Pokrovsk city in Donbas for almost two years now, with more than tens of thousands of lives lost, while still being unable to conquer the region. Capturing cities in Donbas which remain under Ukrainian control, such as Kramatorsk or Slovyansk, will require years, tens of billions of dollars, and significant casualties amounting to double-digit percentage points of the current available Russian military personnel count. Russian capture of major cities like Kharkiv, Sumy or others is unthinkable.

Therefore, this begs the question, why bother to impose conditions of surrender on Ukraine now? Because it clearly favors only one party — Russia.

What concessions exactly is Russia forced to make under the “plan?” Specifically?

A “Promise” not to further attack Ukraine or Europe (point 3)? Despite these “promises” not being worth anything, as proven many times by history, Russia has officially stated repeatedly that attacking anyone “is not their goal”. Has anything changed here? Besides this hollow “promise,” are there any specific concessions?

Point 21 mentions that “Russia will relinquish other agreed territories it controls outside the five regions,” however Russia doesn’t effectively control any meaningful territories in Ukraine outside the five regions mentioned in the text, besides a handful of areas adjacent to the Russian border which can be quickly reoccupied, to be “relinquished” as suggested.

As proven repeatedly throughout history, including the post-1991 history of relations between Ukraine and Russia, security guarantees are valueless when they lack specifics. In order for security guarantees to be valid and binding, they need to be as specific as possible from the guarantor’s side. Only then is there a profound incentive for the aggressor to refrain from attacking again.

The current part of the “plan” devoted to “guarantees” (point 10) primarily only lists reasons for the U.S. to drop and nullify any “security guarantees,” rather than mention at least one specific security commitment from Russia’s side.

The current text of the “plan” cannot be considered as providing anything that can even be remotely named as specific and convincing “security guarantees” for Ukraine.

Nonetheless, in return for absent “guarantees,” the U.S. asks for generous compensation (points 10, 14). This is one more reason to legally claim this “agreement” to be an intentionally invalid and onerous deal imposed on Ukraine, and provides ground for suing the United States in international courts in the future.

These points simply can’t be interpreted otherwise than Moscow’s desire to weaken Ukraine in the face of upcoming new rounds of Russia’s aggression once Moscow is ready. These points include:

The latter point is particularly concerning. While the “plan” veils the intended demise of heavily fortified Ukrainian defenses as a “demilitarised buffer zone,” in reality this would translate to Russia gaining a major advantage, as Ukraine will have to dismantle the major defense line in Donbas that has been effectively holding back Russian offensives since 2014.

This issue is discussed in more detail here.

The demand for Ukraine to withdraw forces from the part of Donbas that Russia has failed to capture militarily for over a decade is one of the most dangerous provisions of the “plan.” Effectively, this only invites further Russian aggression in the coming years.

The provision that, “Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognised as de facto Russian, including by the U.S.” (point 21), doesn’t have any grounding in international law, and only aids Russia in solidifying its legal claims for these territories in the future.

In fact, further language in point 21 should be considered a slip of the tongue to this effect. Point 21 notes, “Ukrainian forces will withdraw from the part of Donetsk oblast that they currently control, and this withdrawal zone will be considered a neutral demilitarised buffer zone, “internationally recognised as territory belonging to the Russian Federation,” hinting at the real intentions of “plan’s” authors to subtly pave way for these territories to be further legally recognized as Russian.

This is directly implied by points 6,7, 8, 9, 10, as well as indirectly, by several other sections of the text.

However, in reality, Ukraine has never been a security threat to Russia—neither in theory, nor in practice. Ukraine started attacking Russia’s territory only after losing over 20 percent of its own territory as a result of Russia’s unprovoked, illegal aggression.

It is only in Russian propaganda that we can find these baseless claims of Ukraine ever posing a security threat to Russia. No serious international document should be based on taking such unfounded false claims at face value.

The “plan” (points 3, 7) dictates limitations for NATO significantly beyond those directly associated with the essence of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This also applies to Ukraine’s “short-term preferential access to the EU market” (point 11).

These are not issues to be considered in the Russia-Ukraine peace agreement; they are clearly outside its scope.

The plan also broadly overreaches on issues regarding Ukraine’s sovereignty, such as holding elections (point 25), navigating the Dnipro river, and exporting grain via Black Sea (point 23). Notably, these are not the issues that currently prevent peace.

Rather, these should be recognized as the desired areas of outreach for the Kremlin, and their inclusion into the “plan” clearly reflects the document’s pro-Kremlin bias.

Europe is already experiencing the consequences of Russia’s hybrid war, and the threat of Russia’s large-scale war against EU member states is looming.

Despite this, not only does Europe not receive any security guarantees under the plan, but it is instead burdened with liabilities.

These include accelerated EU accession and market opening for Ukraine (point 11), as well as giving up frozen Russian assets and contributing substantial financial funds to Ukraine (point 14).

The “plan” offers provisions for Russia to “receive full amnesty” for its criminal actions during the war and Ukraine is to “agree not to make any claims or consider any complaints in the future” (point 26). Russia is supposed to be “reintegrated into the global economy” and Russia is supposed to legalize control of about 20 percent of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory (point 21).

Clearing Russia from any responsibility of the grave consequences of its aggression against Ukraine violates the legal principle of criminal accountability, and encourages further acts of aggression by other dictatorial states — China against Taiwan or Philippines, North Korea against South Korea, etc.

This “plan”, if implemented, will set a dangerous precedent, signaling impunity to all potential aggressors. It creates the assumption that they will be cleared of any responsibility and will be quickly “reintegrated into the global economy” if they simply wage the war too brutally, prompting impatient international leaders to seek appeasement of an aggressor through such undesired amnesties and territorial concessions.

Such provisions clearing Russia of any responsibility for its aggression, violating the U.N. charter and U. N. General Assembly resolutions, also pave the way for Ukraine to potentially sue the United States government in the future in international courts for consciously imposing an invalid and unjust deal for Ukraine.

Point 27, which is supposed to guarantee Russia’s adherence to the “plan”, is hollow, vague and doesn’t contain any specifics.

The phrase, “It is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries” (point 3) is so laughable and was already so broadly memed on the web that it doesn’t even deserve further commentary.

The same goes for point 16: “Russia will enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine”. Russia rewrites its laws and Constitution so easily that it is more complicated to navigate a New York subway than it is to amend a Russian law. This point is not serious.

Similarly, reinstating “all sanctions” in case Russia attacks Ukraine is not a serious measure, as Russia currently continues to wage war despite extensive sanctions, and the implementation of the “plan” will simply buy Moscow time to better adapt to potentially reinstated sanctions, limiting their impact, as Russia did in 2014–2022.

The phrase “All Nazi ideology and activities must be rejected and prohibited” literally means that Putin’s regime in Russia should be immediately dismantled, and Putin and his ruling circle should be immediately imprisoned for de-facto implementation of the ideology and principles of the Third Reich in Russia’s present day policies.

Notably, this includes direct overlap with the terminology of Third Reich top officials and approaches (from Joseph Goebbels “Total War” speech fully identical to current Russian justification for its actions against Ukraine, to Putin publicly accusing Poland of “provoking” Hitler to invade in 1939, etc.).