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For a brief period, the former US president appeared to take a resolute approach regarding the Ukrainian conflict. Following issuing warnings of "serious consequences" last August should Putin carried on obstructing truce negotiations, Trump finally enacted considerable restrictions on the Russian primary petroleum corporations, Rosneft and Lukoil. This action significantly affected Putin's capability to finance his military invasion in Ukraine.

Yet, with his newly presented 28-point peace proposal for the conflict, which was created by US and Russian representatives excluding Ukrainian or EU input, he has clearly reverted to his Russia-friendly stance.

Rewarding Aggression

This plan would in practice reward Putin for attacking a sovereign nation while putting the country's political freedom in peril. Despite bold proclamations that "Ukraine's sovereignty will be confirmed", significant aspects of the plan effectively weaken that essential sovereignty. This constitutes a Kremlin dream would probably be a disaster for Ukraine.

Showing his corporate past, Trump continues to consider the Ukrainian conflict as a mere territorial dispute, like giving Russia a part of Ukraine's territory will satisfy the president. Yet, Putin's military campaign is not simply about controlling a destroyed region of industrial-devastated area in Ukraine's east. It is about Ukraine's political system – and the Russian leader's apparent goal to destroy it so it ceases to acts as an enticing model for the Russian people of the accountable leadership that his increasing autocracy denies them.

Land Concessions

Although freezing in status the presently separated oblasts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, Trump's initiative would force the nation to surrender the whole this eastern territory. Beyond favoring the Russian Federation with territory that its forces have been failed to seize in over a ten years of conflict, this surrender would render Ukrainian defenses critically undermined.

This region is the location of the nation's well-known "stronghold system", the well-established military defenses that represent a critical impediment to enemy progress. Trump would have Ukraine surrender these defenses, giving Putin a open path to the capital if he subsequently decide to resume the hostilities.

Defense Restrictions

Furthermore, in a action that would facilitate renewed hostilities more feasible for Russia, the plan would require Ukraine to reduce the numbers of its armed forces from their current large number soldiers to a cap of 600,000. Significantly, Trump's initiative sets no similar constraints on Russia's military.

Seemingly as a accommodation to Putin's efforts to portray the nation's legitimate administration as extremists, Trump's plan states: "Any extremist doctrine and practices must be rejected and banned." Apparently to emphasize this aspect, it demands that "Ukraine will hold elections in three months" of a ceasefire agreement. At the same time, the proposal places no requirement that Putin risk his authoritarian rule by conducting votes in Russia.

Defense Commitments

Certainly, the proposal makes Russia promise not to "invade neighboring countries" and to "establish in regulation its position of peaceful relations towards Europe and the Ukrainian people". But given that the Russian leadership has breached equivalent agreements in the history – for example the 1994 Budapest memorandum, in which Russia pledged to respect the nation's borders in exchange for relinquishing its historical nuclear arsenal, and the previous peace deals, in which Moscow agreed to a truce and a restoration of seized areas in the Donbas to Kyiv – how should we trust this commitment this time?

This explains the Ukrainian government has been so insistent on external security guarantees. While the proposal warns of a "strong joint military response" in case the Russian Federation restart its invasion, and includes that "The nation will receive strong protection assurances", the specifics range from unclear to troubling. The initiative would not just prevent Ukraine Nato membership but also prevent Nato members from deploying troops on Ukrainian territory, effectively preventing the peacekeeping contingent, likely headed by Britain and France, on which Ukraine had been relying to deter Russia from restoring his diminished forces, re-equipping, and resuming aggression.

Global Reaction

A separate parallel deal apparently would grant the nation with a alliance-like security guarantee, in which any subsequent "significant, deliberate, and sustained military assault" by Russia on the country "would be considered as an act of war threatening the tranquility of the transatlantic community." This implies a armed reaction. Yet unlike a strong Ukrainian military – Ukraine's primary deterrent against additional hostilities – the effectiveness of the side agreement would depend on the commitment of alliance members, like Trump, to react through arms to Putin's attacks, a response they have {not