The Daily Populous Monday November 24th, 2025 evening edition
Authored by inews.co.uk and submitted by theipaper

Ukraine faces one of the 'most difficult moments in our history', its President said, as it mulls peace plan some analysts describe as 'suicide' for Kyiv

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Donald Trump’s peace deal makes Ukraine a “tethered goat” for future invasions by Russia and agreement would be “suicide” for Kyiv, analysts have warned.

Ukraine’s European allies this week tacitly rejected Trump’s peace proposal, a 28-point plan created with Russia, which featured many of the Kremlin’s demands.

The plan was strongly criticised as kowtowing to Putin, with European leaders warning it would “leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attack”.

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Many military analysts and academics have warned that Russia may use a ceasefire in Ukraine to regroup before reattacking.

Trump said the plan was “not his final offer”, and later announced an “updated and refined peace framework” created in partnership with Ukraine.

Trump’s plan – and why it plays into Putin’s hands

Trump’s plan would hand over the Donbas – an eastern region made up of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts – to Russia.

Russia currently controls almost all of Luhansk and a large portion of Donetsk.

Areas that Ukraine still holds in Donetsk would become a demilitarised zone belonging to Russia, which Russian forces would supposedly not enter. Ukrainian forces would have to pull out of these areas.

Crimea – which was annexed by Kremlin forces in 2014 – would be formally recognised as Russia.

This would fulfil Putin’s long-held goal of expanding the borders of Russia. He has been open in his belief that Ukraine has no right to exist and that this war will reclaim historically Russian lands.

Putin listens to Chief Justice of Russia Igor Krasnov, not pictured, during their meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow on 5 November (Photo: Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)

In 2022, Russia changed its constitution to lay claim to four areas of Ukraine – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson – which it did not fully control.

The ceding of territory would also open the door to future invasions, both by weakening Ukrainian militarily and by rewarding this violation of international law.

Handing over the Donbas would mean losing Ukraine’s so-called “fortress belt”, a group of heavily fortified cities, which could enable Russian forces to storm through parts of the country at ease in any future attack.

Ukraine’s fortress belt is made up of a handful of key cities in the eastern Donetsk region

Under the US President’s plan, Ukraine would have to limit the size of its military to 600,000 and commit not to join Nato, also hindering its ability to respond to future invasions.

It would also prevent Nato troops from being stationed in Ukraine after the war, after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the UK was ready to put “boots on the ground, and planes in the air” to ensure Ukraine’s security post-war.

Defence insiders told The i Paper that planning was ongoing for a range of options for British involvement after a ceasefire, and that the UK’s willingness to send troops has not been changed by Trump’s plan.

The plan stipulates that $100bn in frozen Russian assets will be used to rebuild Ukraine; the US will receive 50 per cent of the profits, and the remainder of Russian assets would go into a joint US-Russia fund, for a purpose that so far appears vague.

There would be an amnesty for both sides, removing the possibility of war crimes trial and Ukraine would be expected to hold elections within 100 days of a deal.

Plan would give Putin ‘the key to Kyiv’

Dr David Dunn, professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham, said the 28-point plan was Putin’s “wishlist and dreamsheet” and showed his ability to “manipulate” the “dysfunctional” American decision-making.

“Russia still thinks it can take a maximalist position. They haven’t changed their war aims for the subjugation and pacification of Ukraine, reduced to a vassal state with a weakened army and weakened capacity,” he said.

Dunn described the peace plan as “the creation of Ukraine as a tethered goat for future attacks that Russia could carry out once it remustered its position”.

“It’s an extraordinarily ambitious set of goals that the Russians still have,” he added. “And remarkably, they have completely turned round the pressure the Trump administration was starting to put on Russia.”

Destruction caused by the Russian drone strike in a residential area of Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on 11 November (Photo: Jose Colon/Anadolu via Getty)

Dr Greg Mills, senior associate fellow at Rusi, said that while elements of the plan – confirmation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, military response to any further Russian invasions, reintegrating Russia to the global economy and using some frozen assets to rebuild Ukraine – might be reasonable, other parts would be “suicide for the Ukrainians to agree to”.

“Under the terms of this proposal, Ukraine would effectively give Moscow the keys to Kyiv by giving up the strategically vital areas around Kramatorsk in the Donbas, cutting the size of its army by around 30 per cent and foregoing its long-range weapons,” he said.

“They do not make the same demands of Russia, and together with the end of sanctions, are an invitation to another round of war.”

Mills said that such early Ukrainian elections would be an “invitation for Russian meddling if ever there was one, along with administrative bedlam, not least given around ten million Ukrainians have been uprooted by the war”.

Europe’s counterplan hands Kyiv back some control

European leaders have drafted their own peace proposal for Ukraine, which removes many pro-Russian elements of Trump’s plan.

The proposal, drawn up by the UK, France and Germany and first revealed by The Telegraph, would allow Ukraine’s forces to stand at 800,000 in peace time. This is close to its current size, which Zelensky says is 880,000.

Under Europe’s plan, Ukraine would commit not to recover its occupied territory militarily, and negotiations on territorial swaps would start from the current line of contact.

Sir Keir Starmer with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as he hosts a ‘Coalition of the Willing’ meeting of international partners on Ukraine in London last month (Photo: Henry Nicholls/ Pool/AFP)

It would leave open the possibility of Ukraine joining Nato.

The European plan also suggests a security guarantee from the US similar to Nato’s Article 5, which would commit America to treat an attack on Ukraine as an attack on an ally.

Under Nato’s agreement, an attack on an ally is treated as an attack on all.

Both plans would compensate the US an undisclosed sum for providing this security backstop.

After a meeting in Geneva on Sunday, the US and Ukraine said they had created an “updated and refined peace framework” to end the war.

US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said he was “very optimistic” about the progress of the talks, while a joint statement from the two countries said that any eventual deal would “fully uphold” Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Neither side has released details of the new plan, but it will have to move the dial significantly from the first draft to be palatable to the thousands of Ukrainians suffering through the war.

As Zelensky put it, Ukraine faces “either 28 difficult points, or an extremely harsh winter, the harshest ever and further risks. Life without freedom, without dignity, without justice.”

GrizzledFart on November 24th, 2025 at 19:46 UTC »

I'm not even going to attempt to judge whether this is a good deal or not, but ultimately some sort of deal is going to have to be made - and that is going to require Ukraine to make very painful concessions. Barring some massive shift, Ukraine is simply not going to be able to take back the territories it has lost. That's the reality. If given enough support, they could potentially do substantial damage to Russia's finances, but that will at best stop Russia's slow creep into Ukrainian territory, it won't take back territory already taken.

mehupmost on November 24th, 2025 at 13:36 UTC »

The reports that Ukraine is now publicly ready to give up the Russian occupied land in exchange for peace, is a red flag for me.

It tells me that they are very very worried that they cannot stop the Russian advance.

...which means that Russia will not want to stop (despite the grinding losses).

I've heard other reports of severe man shortages all along the front.

I'm hoping there isn't a collapse of the Ukrainian front, but I'm worried we might see exactly that in the next 12 months.

theipaper on November 24th, 2025 at 12:35 UTC »

Donald Trump’s peace deal makes Ukraine a “tethered goat” for future invasions by Russia and agreement would be “suicide” for Kyiv, analysts have warned.

Ukraine’s European allies this week tacitly rejected Trump’s peace proposal, a 28-point plan created with Russia, which featured many of the Kremlin’s demands.

The plan was strongly criticised as kowtowing to Putin, with European leaders warning it would “leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attack”.

Many military analysts and academics have warned that Russia may use a ceasefire in Ukraine to regroup before reattacking.

Trump said the plan was “not his final offer”, and later announced an “updated and refined peace framework” created in partnership with Ukraine.

Trump’s plan – and why it plays into Putin’s hands

Trump’s plan would hand over the Donbas – an eastern region made up of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts – to Russia.

Russia currently controls almost all of Luhansk and a large portion of Donetsk.

Areas that Ukraine still holds in Donetsk would become a demilitarised zone belonging to Russia, which Russian forces would supposedly not enter. Ukrainian forces would have to pull out of these areas.

Crimea – which was annexed by Kremlin forces in 2014 – would be formally recognised as Russia.

This would fulfil Putin’s long-held goal of expanding the borders of Russia. He has been open in his belief that Ukraine has no right to exist and that this war will reclaim historically Russian lands.