REFLECTIONS | Will 28-point Trump Plan Lead To Peace In Ukraine? | Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

Speaking in Kolkata recently, external affairs minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar warned listeners that it wasn’t a pun when he said that “politics increasingly trumps economics” in our era. Indeed, the threat of a world war looms over the world largely because US President Donald Trump’s so-called 28-point peace plan appears to condone Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Ironically, neither Ukraine nor the world might have feared this larger global peril if Ukraine had not been one of four countries -- the other three being Argentina, Brazil and South Africa -- to have voluntarily renounced nuclear weapons in their hope of ushering in a safer world for mankind. Yet, thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unilateral belligerence, the threat remains even more dangerous than before because the frustrated Russians are discovering the folly of trying to conquer a neighbouring country that is doggedly determined to maintain its independence. It was on February 19, 2022, immediately before Mr Putin’s so-called “special military operation”, that Russia held drills of its “strategic deterrent forces” in the presence of the President and his Belarussian counterpart, President Alexander Lukashenko. Mr Trump’s intervention since then has repeatedly been compared to Neville Chamberlain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia under the “peace for our time” slogan in the run-up to the Second World War.

After the strain and privations of three years of ceaseless fighting, little can remain of the grace that marked Kyiv’s blocks of flats that I remember from a visit on the eve of the Soviet collapse and, consequently, of Ukrainian independence. Leaving aside the six or so deaths during the 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation -- a smash and grab piece of vandalism that the international media had compared with India’s absorption of the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim in 1975 -- between 14,200 and 14,400 military and civilian deaths were recorded during the war in Donbas. The number of Ukrainians killed and wounded during the Russian invasion of February 24, 2022 until November 2025 is estimated at between 400,000 and 1.5 million. Ukraine’s physical and financial loss during this period must be humungous. Verified Russian military deaths in Ukraine have risen to at least 152,142 since the full-scale invasion, according to a joint count by BBC Russian and the Mediazona organisation.

What the world still does not know, however, is why Mr Putin covets Ukraine. It’s even more mysterious that he seems to be convinced that he has a right to sovereign Ukrainian territory. The two were separate countries even when both were members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Ukraine and the North American Treaty Organisation, Nato for short, do not have a mutual defence pact because Ukraine is not a member of Nato. Instead, they have a partnership arrangement that goes back to 1994, and includes significant political, economic, and military support from Nato. Such support to Ukraine has increased substantially since the 2022 Russian invasion, and discussions are continuing regarding potential future security arrangements, such as an “Article 5-like” pact, to provide Ukraine with security guarantees, though these would be separate from formal Nato membership.

Ukraine joined the Partnership for Peace programme in 1994 and the Nato-Ukraine Commission was established in 1997. Nato has provided various forms of support to Ukraine since then, including the Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP) to help with recovery, reconstruction, and institutional transformation. But Nato members -- especially the US -- appear to blow hot and cold over full membership, which is what Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, a former entertainer who is the sixth holder of the country’s highest office, wants most. Mr Zelenskyy is convinced that Nato membership will be the ultimate security and that Ukraine need fear no power on earth once it is assured of the protection of the 32 Nato member countries, 30 of which are in Europe and two in North America.

As it happens, it’s what Mr Trump, leader of the free world, Nato’s chief, and reckoned to be the most powerful man in the world, appears to desire least. He has not made his reasons clear; in fact, he hasn’t actually said he does not want Ukraine in Nato. The part of him that hankers for the Nobel Peace Prize and is anxious to cultivate equally cordial relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel may even be reconciled to underwriting Ukraine’s security. But being a man of contrary impulses and contradictory urges, he is desperately anxious to do so without banging the door on Mr Putin and the Kremlin. Hence his 28-point peace plan, many of whose clauses read as if they were drafted by Mr Putin’s own advisers in the Kremlin.

These include the necessity formally to hand over to Russia the entire wedge of Ukrainian territory of Donetsk and Luhansk that Mr Putin’s troops have already seized in a bloody war and which the US must now proclaim to be Russian. That also includes acceptance of America’s “de facto” recognition of the Crimea and other areas that Russia has occupied. No Nato forces could ever be based on Ukrainian soil. Not only must Ukrainian forces be capped at 600,000 troops -- which means a 25 per cent reduction from today’s level -- but they must never possess long-range weapons that could physically reach Russia.

In return, Kyiv would be palmed off with pious promises of American support in the event of another Russian invasion. In addition, the Trump plan would withdraw $100 billion of Russia’s frozen assets for American-led plans to rebuild war-shattered Ukraine and invest in its severely wounded economy.

Neutral readers of this column might find the spirit and conditions of this 28-point proposal even more galling than its specific terms. Proudly living up his “transactional” image and reputation, Mr Trump will swallow 50 per cent of the profits of the investment under his patronage in Ukraine’s reconstruction, proving that truly does “politics increasingly trump economics”. The three-day ultimatum that Mr Trump conceded in a Fox Radio News interview means that the proposal and its terms and conditions will already be old news by the time anyone reads this column. If those terms are not to Mr Zelenskyy’s liking, “then he can continue to fight his little heart out”, in Mr Trump’s brusquely dismissive reference to a man who has earned his people’s enormous affection and respect and the admiration of the whole world by his strong refusal to kowtow to a vastly superior bully. Whether or not Mr Zelenskyy prevails, he deserves all honours for trying.