POLITICS: This Russia-Ukraine ‘peace deal’ makes zero sense on ANY front

Yuck: The draft “peace” plan Russian officials have hashed out with envoys from President Donald Trump administration is barely more than a complete Ukrainian surrender.

“Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees,” it says. From who?

Not Washington: Trump’s been crystal clear that US forces won’t get drawn into this war.

And no one in Europe has the ability to offer reliable guarantees: Most nations barely have armies at all.

Meanwhile, the draft imposes all manner of specific losses on Kyiv: Give up its claims to Russian-occupied Crimea and other areas, including parts of the Donbas that the Kremlin hasn’t seized; agree to Russian control of now-occupied in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia; let Moscow claim half the electricity from the Zaporizhzhya nuclear-power complex; shrink its army by more than half and on and on.

The draft says both sides get “full amnesty for their actions during the war,” when all the atrocities have been Russian; every humanitarian post-war provision is conditioned on future negotiations.

We get why bloody Vladimir Putin wants all this, but how can this amount to a plan for lasting peace when not four years ago he simply set out to conquer the whole country on the absurd pretext of ousting its “Nazi” leadership, and when he’s ruthlessly slaughtered civilians by the tens of thousands simply because Ukraine fought back?

Back in September, Trump rightly recognized that Ukraine was winning, so President Volodymyr Zelensky had no need to cede territory to win a peace.

Ukraine’s strikes on oil refineries landed a hard blow on Russia’s wobbling economy, and Trump applied more pressure with sanctions on Moscow’s two largest energy companies, while the European Union followed up with stiff penalties of its own.

Russia’s oil exports have since dropped by as much as 73%; the Kremlin is at risk of running out of both cash and bodies to throw at the conflict.

Yes, Zelensky is facing a major scandal and resulting political crisis, but that’s no reason to rescue Putin from the corner he’s backed into.

No wonder Kremlin shill Kirill Dmitriev crowed: “We feel the Russian position is really being heard.”

Maybe special envoy Steve Witkoff sees a point in at least getting Putin to specify his demands for an end to fighting, with an eye to some more-realistic counteroffer.

We take some heart from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comment: “Achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions,” he wrote late Thursday on X, suggesting this “plan” is just one step toward drawing up “a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

Ukraine should counteroffer with equally serious proposals, starting with a complete Russian withdrawal (including from Crimea) and Moscow’s major disarmament.

Heck, Kyiv could demand the ouster of Putin’s regime and it would still be less one-sided than this nonsense.