Ukrainian Diplomat: This Plan Has No Chance

• 20.11.2025, 11:48

Only the WSU can stop the war.

Reports have emerged in the US that Donald Trump has prepared his own plan to end the war in Ukraine. According to US media, the document may include both elements of pressure on the Kremlin's allies and proposals for negotiations. Kiev, according to Axios, called it "capitulationist" and rejected and rejected it.

What is behind Trump's new "peace initiative"? The website Charter97.org talked about it with Ukrainian diplomat and political scientist, director of the Center for Defense Strategies Alexander Hara:

- There is a joke that if there are cubes on which is written "Zh", "O", "P", "A", there is no way you can build another word. It is an attempt to find a solution to a problem that finds no solution. Now the Americans have clearly realized that Russia's war against Ukraine is not only about Ukraine, it's about European security. But the very idea that Dmitriev and Whitkoff are talking about Ukraine, Europe, European security and some kind of guarantees for Russia is not viable. There are no Ukrainians there, and there are no Europeans there either. And, accordingly, such a plan cannot work, because the vital interests of both Ukraine and Europe are not taken into account. This is the most important thing.

Secondly, I think you have to be a very naive person to talk about any guarantees of Russia's security. Russia attacked Ukraine, Russia attacked Georgia, Russia is present in Libya, it was recently in Syria, in the Central African Republic, in Burkina Faso, in Sudan and so on. Well, certainly these countries have not threatened Russia, and it has nothing to do with NATO, the European Union, or the United States.

So they have a naive perception that Russia is some kind of threat. I'm not talking about the fact that the Europeans themselves recognize that they are not ready for a war with the Russian Federation, and they need several years to get ready to go to war with the Russians. And, accordingly, they don't want to do that, they want to contain Russia. So the very idea of including a guarantee of Russia's security is, in my opinion, absurd in its basis. Whatever the plan is, based on Trump's "success" in the Middle East (and we see that the war there has subsided, but it has not ended), and now they want to transfer this "success" to Ukraine, to Europe. I think this is naive.

- What measures of pressure on the Kremlin can Trump use to force Moscow to come to the negotiating table? Can the threat of 500 percent duties be considered part of that pressure?"

- Of course. The attempt to threaten Trump with tariffs has failed. First of all, the Russians understood perfectly well that Trump doesn't want to do that, but wants some kind of negotiations. We saw that the Alaska meeting was just the right opportunity for the Russians to delay these possible sanctions. They gave some positive signals, but the results of the summit were not positive: Russia did not make any concessions.

Do the Americans have the opportunity to exert pressure? Of course they do. And we saw that when there were two Russian major companies, responsible for half of the oil exports, under sanctions. We saw that both India and China (at least their largest companies) curtailed their cooperation under the fear of secondary sanctions. So there is an energy component.

And the second component is financial sanctions on foreign debt and so on. Here the Americans still have quite a large leverage. They could, in principle, go for it, but it would be an escalation on Washington's part. That's the way they look at it. But they will try, by and large, to offer Putin an option where he keeps his face and stays with the occupied territories he has seized.

- How will Ukraine perceive the emergence of this plan: as a threat, as a chance, or as another instrument of pressure on Russia?

- There is absolutely no chance. As long as Russia has resources, it will not stop. This metaphor came to my mind: Putin's Russia is like a monkey that grabbed Ukraine, and Ukraine is like a coconut. And she can't pull her hand with this nut out of the bars. And it's hung up. Trump is trying to help RF instead of helping Ukraine to finish this "critter".

Ukraine has no illusions that peace with Russia is possible in the near future. A ceasefire for a while is possible. And, to me, it is the ceasefire that is more likely. And it won't have to do with Trump, but with the Ukrainian Defense Forces destroying Russian energy. So then Putin, as a rational player, will naturally also seek to stop or at least go for a ceasefire to save the energy sector.