The 28-point peace plan is now a 19-point peace plan.
President Donald Trump says the plan for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine that was presented to Kyiv last week, and was so heavily tilted toward Russia’s demands that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it “one of most difficult moments in our history,” has been “fine-tuned” after talks between US and Ukrainian negotiators. The Ukrainians say the deal — which now includes more robust post-war security guarantees for Ukraine — is acceptable for them, and Zelenskyy is seeking a meeting with Trump to discuss the thorny issue of Ukraine ceding territories to Russia.
What about the Russians? Trump is dispatching his envoy Steve Witkoff to present the new plan to President Vladimir Putin. (Witkoff’s conversations with his Russian counterparts appear to have been the source of the original 28-point plan.) But the initial response from the Kremlin is not very positive. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that if the new plan differs from the “spirit and letter” of the deal Putin thought he had reached with Trump in Alaska in August, the “situation will be fundamentally different.” That understanding involved Ukraine ceding the rest of the eastern Donbas region, including areas not currently under Russian control, to Russia.
Trump appears to be hoping for a repeat of the recent Gaza ceasefire, where the US was able to strongarm Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a deal with Hamas that he wasn’t all that happy with. The importance of American weaponry and intelligence sharing to the Ukrainian war effort gives Trump leverage over Zelenskyy — that’s why the Ukrainian leader continues to engage with Washington despite the diplomatic whiplash of Trump’s frequently changed stances on the war.
But at this point, nobody seems to have leverage over Putin. Which is why the question of whether this war will end soon comes down to what terms Putin finds acceptable. This raises the depressing question of whether peace is possible at all as long as Putin is alive and in power.
Why Russia would see no reason to stop now
The Ukrainians may have little choice but to continue to engage with the US-led peace negotiations, but senior officials in Kyiv are clearly not optimistic about it. In an interview with ABC last summer, former foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba was asked if the war can end while Putin is still alive.
“No,” he replied, adding that while a “lower intensity conflict” was possible, “I cannot imagine eternal peace between Russia and Ukraine achieved during President Putin’s lifetime.” Even a temporary ceasefire, this line of thinking goes, may only be a pause before Russia resumes its efforts.
It’s not even completely clear that the original 28-point plan would have been acceptable to Putin. It may have looked to many in Ukraine and the West like a Kremlin wish list. But it would also have allowed Ukraine to keep a military of 600,000 troops (which would be the largest in Europe after Russia), required Russia to relinquish control of the disputed regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, and forced Russia to settle for “de facto” rather than official recognition of its control over Crimea and other annexed regions.
The new deal reportedly allows Ukraine to keep 800,000 troops along with “NATO-style” security guarantees; it is probably even more of a nonstarter. Even if Trump can push Zelenskyy into parting with the Donbas, post-war Ukraine is likely to be a highly militarized and implacably anti-Russian country on Russia’s borders. That’s not what Putin had in mind when he launched this war nearly four years ago in hopes of quickly taking Kyiv and replacing Zelenskyy’s government with a complacent vassal.
Russia’s forces continue to advance in Ukraine, but their pace has been slow and the widespread use of small deadly drones is making it slower. In 2025, Russia took an additional 1 percent of Ukraine’s land area at an estimated cost of 200,000 troops killed and wounded. The US-based Institute for the Study of War calculates that at its current rate, it will take Russia until August 2027 at the earliest to conquer the rest of the Donbas.
But Putin likely still believes he is winning this war, and the pace of progress is just enough for him to continue with that belief. He considers this war too important for Russia’s future to give up now.
There’s a disconnect in time frames between Washington and Moscow right now. Trump came into office pledging to end the war in a day, has given Putin various two-week deadlines, and just a few days ago appeared to hope this could be wrapped up by Thanksgiving.
Putin, meanwhile, considers the very existence of an independent Ukraine a threat and is thinking in terms of centuries. He apparently exasperated Trump at their meeting in Alaska by launching into one of his trademark historical lectures about figures from Russian history like Rurik of Novgorod and Yaroslav the Wise to explain his position on Ukraine.
It may be that there will come a tipping point. Perhaps if Russia can finally take the rest of the Donbas, or if Zelenskyy’s internal political struggles and scandals remove him from power, it would be enough for Putin to take the win. (With Europe now making up much of the economic and military support the US previously provided, a complete Ukrainian collapse seems unlikely in the short term.) Or perhaps the Ukrainians will be able to fight the Russians to a standstill, and the economic pressure on Russian society will grow to the point that he has to change course. Or perhaps, he views this as a civilizational struggle that’s worth continuing no matter how long it takes, or how massive the human cost.
Under current Russian law, Putin can remain in power until 2036. Despite periodic rumors of illness, he seems to be in fairly good health at 73, and Russia’s succession plan is a complete mystery.
For the moment, his rule looks remarkably stable despite the stresses on Russian society caused by war and sanctions. We’re a long way from the heady days of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny, when it looked like the regime might collapse at any moment.
As Russian opposition leaders point out, regimes like this one often appear totally stable just before they fall — but hoping for that outcome is not exactly a viable strategy for Ukraine or its allies.
But it does appear there’s a chance that Putin is willing to devote the rest of his time in office to victory in Ukraine, that he does not have a limit on the amount of Russian blood and treasure he’s willing to spend to achieve it, and that even Trump is not able to give him what he needs to feel he’s accomplished it.
