President Trump's peace plan, which was communicated more in terms of a "diktat," has little to do with Ukraine. In fact, in an attempt to save Putin and give Trumpism a fresh start, the strange American president seems willing to sacrifice Ukraine and, with it, European security. Like most of what Trump does, except for his own business, the announcement of the plan was nothing more than a political PR stunt. Despite the intransigence displayed by Vice President J.D. Vance, as well as the now famous Dan Driscoll, also a member of the vice president's circle of friends, Trump understands perfectly well that his plan is nothing more than a machine for producing shocking headlines, good only for diversifying the American public agenda.
The peace plan, an attempt to divert attention from Trump's domestic problems
The emergence of this scandalous plan at this moment has nothing to do with what is happening on the Ukrainian front, nor even with developments in Russia. The explanation lies in events in the US, which clearly show that President Trump is in rapid decline. First and foremost, the MAGA cult seems, if not to be falling apart, at least to be fragmenting. The resignation from the Senate of the true vestal virgin of Trumpism, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, but also the civil war within the MAGA virtual community, show that Trump is beginning to seriously disappoint his hard-core supporters. The public criticism levelled at Trump by the famous conservative influencer Joe Rogan regarding the declassification of Jeffrey Epstein's archive, as well as his indirect support for the new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, show that the spell cast by the knight Trump is beginning to wear off.
Trump feels such urgency that he even staged a scene in which he mimicked cordiality and support for the new mayor, under the pretext that he is interested in the success of Mamdani's program. Being a true populist, Trump does not hesitate to latch onto the anti-Israel sentiment that is becoming increasingly popular within the MAGA community. Tucker Carlson's criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu, not so much for the war in Gaza as for the effectiveness of the Israeli lobby network in the US, shows that at least part of the MAGA movement is beginning to reveal its political essence. The president's timid response to Tucker Carlson's question about his interview with the famous far-right activist Nick Fuentes shows that Trump does not want to clash with the anti-Israel wing of the MAGA movement, especially since his relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have become strained recently.
The plan's goals: to restore Trump's image, save Putin's regime, and discredit the European project
In this context, overshadowed by the specter of Jeffrey Epstein, the American president saw fit to launch his peace plan in Ukraine. The result of Steve Witkoff's prolonged reflection in Kirill Dmitriev's private residences, so private that Marco Rubio's State Department had to warn the enthusiastic representative about it, the American plan has three main goals, none of which strictly concern Ukraine.
The first is to relaunch the America first policy domestically and restore Trump to the position of peacemaker hero. In addition, however facile it may be, the aim is to dilute the domestic political agenda, which would lower the Epstein case in the list of America's moral priorities, especially after the cold shower administered by the two legislative chambers. The strange reaction of the American president to the appearance of a clip in which former American military personnel remind active ones that they are obliged not to obey illegal orders shows that the Washington administration is feeling the full force of domestic political pressure. Like the Russian dictator, Trump wants to quickly put the war in Ukraine on the back burner, while still achieving some major foreign policy goals. What Trump's most radical former supporters now reproach him for is that he attaches too much importance to foreign policy, neglecting the domestic agenda, especially the economic and social agenda. It is unclear how Trump will respond to these concerns, which are negatively affecting his domestic support. For now, the president is trying to make financial assistance from the Department of Homeland Security to large cities such as New York, Boston, and Los Angeles conditional on the cessation of diversity programs and compliance with new regulations on illegal immigration. Obviously, because this funding is related to disaster preparedness and public order services, the presidential order has already been put on hold by a federal judge.
The second goal is to save Putin's regime and enable the system created by the Moscow dictator to continue to exist after his demise. Putin is engaged in an effort to perfect a system that lacks only one component in order to perpetuate itself after his departure from power, namely the mechanism of succession. The war in Ukraine has accelerated and radicalized the process of forming a Russian "national" ideology, which, whether we like it or not, is shared by most Russians on an emotional level. The political system, based on presidential verticality, institutionalized corruption, and the omnipresence of the control and repression apparatus, can be inherited if the transition is long enough and meticulously organized. The economic structure, based on state ownership and a system of fiefdoms entrusted to the bureaucratic aristocracy, can function just as well or as poorly under another autocrat. What is missing from this construct is a mechanism of succession that would allow the transition to be manually piloted through the establishment of a co-autocrat function. However, such a mechanism can only be implemented if the system delivers, both in terms of international prestige and in terms of the "income from office" of the bureaucratic aristocracy. The stalemate in the war in Ukraine, where the Russian conquest of cities the size of Berești is presented by propaganda as a repeat of the victory at Stalingrad, as well as Western sanctions, which have dramatically reduced export revenues and exponentially increased supply costs, are preventing the regime from moving on to organizing the succession mechanism. If Russia continues to sell its energy to China and India at the prices and conditions it does now, Russian oil and gas exports will once again become a destination for public investment, as was the case during the Soviet era. Moscow desperately needs to escape the burden of sanctions and obtain a European security arrangement that will give it international prestige, a sphere of influence, and halt European political and military consolidation. Once these objectives are achieved, the next phase of expansion can be planned under much more relaxed conditions.
The third goal that America and Russia share is to discredit the European political project and return Europe to the system of alliances in place in the interwar period. Trump's America and Putin's Russia are repulsed by the idea of a united Europe that defines itself first and foremost as a normative power. Both leaders hate principles, love scandalous deals, and enjoy treating international politics like a game of poker. So far, both have managed to put the European project on hold, returning the continent to the system of Franco-Prussian-British directorates, which is occasionally also joined by Giorgia Meloni's Piedmont. Even so, Europe has so far managed to temper the American president's pro-Russian peacemaking enthusiasm, and it is now vital for its existence to do so again.
The peace plan, a Russian guide to dismantling Ukraine as an independent state
Despite discussions about the real authorship of the plan, it is not so important whether it was conceived in Moscow or Washington. What is important is that it was publicly launched by the US administration, after a fairly explicit spoiler by Kirill Dmitriev, intended to highlight Russian support for this initiative. Beyond the territorial issues, which are treated according to the Russian recipe for preserving frozen conflicts, the plan is a genuine Russian guide to dismantling Ukraine as an independent state.
US security guarantees are limited in time, circumstantial, and therefore ineffective in reality. The provision stating that they will come into effect after a "prolonged and vigorous" Russian aggression, and not after the first missile launched against Ukraine, shows that the mechanism is designed to be subject to continuous reconsideration. What is clear, however, is that Ukraine will not join NATO, with the rest being subject to negotiations in a future format that is as vague as it is unlikely.
The plan does not contain any significant obligations for Russia, apart from the formal confiscation of funds abroad, which appear to be considered spoils of war by the US administration. Trump proposes to Putin a kind of SovRom, where Russian money frozen by various Western countries is considered American investment in joint ventures in Ukraine, as happened in occupied Romania after World War II. Seemingly taken from Soviet posters of the 1930s about imperialist capitalism, the economic "plan" seems only good for arousing intense anti-American resentment in Ukraine. All the more so as it will be compared, if such a peace is signed, with a future Russian offer to the Ukrainians, which will be much more reasonable. In reality, Trump does not care much whether it will be implemented. The important thing is that it is launched publicly and sounds exactly like the MAGA propaganda clips. Much more interesting is the obligation for Ukraine, like a defeated aggressor country, to hold elections within a few months of signing the peace agreement. With such a well-developed propaganda apparatus and such a vast espionage and support network as Russia has in Ukraine, it is clear that after such a peace, forces would come to power that would support the idea of a historic reconciliation with Moscow. This is without mentioning the public effects of restoring the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow to the status of state church or those of declaring Russian the second official language. It is surprising that the plan does not include the provision on the federalization of Ukraine, but it can always be brought back into discussion.
Peace in Ukraine, a test for Europe. The continent's security depends on stopping Russia's expansion
If accepted in a form close to the current one, Trump's peace would not only fail to safeguard Ukraine's independence, but would also ensure all the conditions for its transformation into an annex of Russia. And because Russian insecurity grows with the territory it occupies, such a situation would automatically raise the issue of the "threat" from NATO on Ukraine's borders, i.e., Central and Southeastern Europe.
The only service this plan does us is that it clearly shows what and how the Trump administration thinks about Europe, giving us some serious clues about the solidity of American security commitments. That is precisely why the European intervention under discussion must be decisive, with all the risks that a collision with Trump entails. At present, Washington's commitment to Europe is undergoing a critical process of reinterpretation, and peace in Ukraine is a test that Europe is setting for itself. If it manages to include at least part of its agenda and values in the text of the future peace agreement, temporarily halting Russian expansion, then it can be considered a subject of international relations. Ukraine will lose territory at the end of this war, but the territories remaining under Kyiv's authority must be quickly and fully integrated into the Western world. The European borders of the Western system have already been fixed, and the question now is not their existence but the determination to defend them. This is what Putin and Trump are now testing with the new peace plan in Ukraine.
