Extract from ABC News
Analysis
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been cautious in his comments on the 28-point US plan for peace in Ukraine. (Reuters)
It's easy to forget just how many summits, meetings, rounds of negotiations, claims and counter-claims there have been about the war in Ukraine since Russia invaded its neighbour in 2022.
The most ostentatious of these involved a meeting in August in Alaska between United States President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladamir Putin.
It was conspicuous for a number of reasons, including the fact it saw Putin — who has an arrest warrant out for him from the International Criminal Court — greeted on American soil by a US President.
Trump gave him the red carpet treatment, and a US military fly past, but in return got literally nothing — on many assessments — but a global humiliation.
No matter how many false starts there have been to date, Putin's basic intransigence on demands that no national leader — or their allies — could really accept, has been a constant.
Most notable has been Putin's push to gain concessions of territory that he has not been able to get militarily via a costly and long-running war.
There is also his demand that Ukraine be forever forbidden from joining NATO — a move he had long regarded as a threat to Russian sovereignty and which became a major justification for the rising tensions with the smaller country.
The deal also effectively demands concessions from the rest of Europe, which is why European leaders have reacted with such alarm to the proposal.
It's not just because of the concessions it makes to Russia, but because it implicitly makes concessions on Europe's behalf, and raises security concerns for Western Europe.
It would involve a change in the constitution of NATO, because the draft reportedly includes that NATO would agree to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.
Strangely, the United States is presenting itself as a "middle man" between Russia and NATO, even though it is the largest member of NATO.
What is more, it is largely now Europe that has been funding and arming Ukraine (with weapons it is buying from the US) as the US has withdrawn its assistance.
But this has not been recognised in the moves by the US to negotiate with Russia on a peace plan without either Ukraine or European allies.
A look at what is being proposed
When news leaked out last week that there was a new 28-point plan for peace in Ukraine, the first reaction around the rest of the world was mostly shock.
That's because the plan — while being attributed to the US — was almost entirely what Putin has been seeking since before the invasion, only with a sense of being even less conciliatory than previously was the case.
And now there are also measures in the proposal which aim to enrich the US.
A detailed look at the 28-point plan — as it has been reported — show some very minor concessions to Russia and a lot of notably vague commitments on the Russian side.
For example, it says that "it is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and NATO will not expand further".
But it mostly contains all the same points that have always been made with more or less force by Moscow.
That becomes clear when you assess, for example, the terms of the 28-point plan against the reported deal being pushed at the Anchorage summit in August.
To get a sense of how things have moved, the reported Russian territorial demands at the time of the Alaska summit were that:
- Ukraine would withdraw from the Donetsk Oblast;
- That frontlines in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts would be frozen;
- And that Russia, for its part, would withdraw from the Kharkiv and Sumy Oblasts.
The new proposal is that:
- "Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognised as de facto Russian, including by the United States";
- "Kherson and Zaporizhzhia will be frozen along the line of contact, which will mean de facto recognition along the line of contact";
- And "Russia will relinquish other agreed territories it controls outside the five regions".
The plan also said: "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. Russian forces will not enter this demilitarised zone."
The Russian demand that is most difficult for Ukraine to consider is that it withdraw from, and handover to Russia, the bitterly fought Donetsk province, which it currently controls.
That's despite a relentless attack on the region by Russia since 2014, which has made only the slowest headway.
It's not just about giving up the territory, it would also mean thousands of Ukrainians coming under Russian control, or displacement.
And it would leave vulnerable a string of cities which form a defensive wall against Russia.
The US/Russian proposal for Donetsk would make it a "neutral demilitarised buffer zone", but few in Europe believe that Putin would not use it as a base for further incursions.
A careful and restrained response
Those suspicions only intensify when the US/Russian proposal insists there could be no "reassurance" force from other countries to help protect Ukraine as well as a demand that Ukraine reduce the size of its military — with no matching change in Russian military forces.
Europe also has a direct interest in the size of the Ukrainian military.
It is currently the biggest military force in Europe and is seen as the literal frontline protection for Western Europe against Russia.
The perceived need to avoid provoking the volatile US President into an even harder line position has meant the Europeans — and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zolenskyy — have been exceptionally careful and restrained in their language about the proposal.
And the very changeable nature of Trump means that his position could also change again several times.
Or he could lose interest in the Ukrainian negotiations, which many observers noted had proved a welcome distraction at home from the release of the Epstein files and the public fracturing of the President's MAGA base.
The Trump administration swooped in this week to maximise the pressure on Ukraine to accept a deal. (Reuters: Aaron Schwartz)
In the brutal equations being considered about the future security of both Ukraine and Europe however, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on the weekend that the US proposal would leave the country more vulnerable to Russian aggression in the long term.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Russia "can't continue to advance and engage in its hybrid attacks in Europe".
The Europeans are now desperately trying to turn what appears to be a template for one deal into something very different.
Europe comes back with its own proposal
Von der Leyen set out three main points of difference on the weekend.
"First, borders cannot be changed by force," she said.
"Second, as a sovereign nation there cannot be limitations on Ukraine's armed forces that would leave the country vulnerable to future attack and thereby also undermining European security.
"Third, the centrality of the European Union in securing peace for Ukraine must be fully reflected.
"Ukraine must have the freedom and sovereign right to choose its own destiny. They have chosen a European destiny."
Europe has responded with its own plan on Ukraine. (Reuters: Yves Herman)
The major pressure point that the US has over Ukraine is not so much weapons anymore, but access to intelligence.
Ukraine's allies, meeting at a security conference in Halifax, Novia Scotia, have been debating the extent to which the withdrawal of those assets could be replaced by other countries or commercial providers.
Europe also thought it was buying its way further into having a say in Ukraine with its proposal to use frozen Russian assets to help fund Ukraine's war.
But after Belgium blinked on this idea last month, a decision to proceed with the plan was delayed until next month.
And now the United States has seized the idea, proposing a complicated arrangement in which it would take $US100 billion for a US-Ukraine investment vehicle that would deliver half its profits to the US and $US200 billion would go to a US-Russia joint venture.
Europe would be obligated to add another $100 billion to the pool of funds.
European leaders were due to have more meetings about the deal during a separate summit in Angola on Monday and Tuesday, local time.
They have regularly failed to act decisively enough to counter the blunderbus of either Putin or Trump, let alone the two of them acting together.
So the question is whether that changes in coming days, and/or where the US position moves next, given all the conflicting signals from Trump and his secretary of state Marco Rubio about just who is driving this deal, what is the deadline, and how negotiable are the terms.
Laura Tingle is the ABC's global affairs editor.
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