Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is bringing his “90% ready” 20-point plan for peace with Russia to Florida Sunday, December 28, for President Donald Trump’s review. After more than 1,400 days of fighting, could the war in Eastern Europe soon end? Realistically, that largely depends on Vladimir Putin, who has shown little enthusiasm for peace. Sunday’s meeting may represent a hopeful step in the right direction, but the sticking points of that remaining “10%” could still kill 100% of the deal.
Fun in the Sun?
Weather forecasters predict a warm, sunny day in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday. A high of 78 and a low of 66 will surely be a welcome replacement for the snow and high of 32 expected in Kyiv. President Zelensky is looking for more than a tan out of his trip to Mar-a-Lago this weekend, but if he and President Trump can’t hammer out the pesky details to the satisfaction of all parties – including Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and the European Union – that may be all he brings home.
President Zelensky told the press on Friday, December 26, that he will meet with his US counterpart in Florida on Sunday. He added that his 20-point plan was 90% complete and that “our task is to make sure everything is 100% ready.”
“We are not losing a single day,” Zelensky posted on social media. “We have agreed on a meeting at the highest level – with President Trump in the near future. A lot can be decided before the new year.”
President Trump said in an interview that he thinks it’ll go well with Zelensky and with Putin when the time comes for that talk, but he held off on endorsing the Ukrainian’s plan prematurely. “He doesn’t have anything until I approve it,” Trump said. “So we’ll see what he’s got.”
The Kremlin may not agree with Zelensky’s “90%” assessment, with senior Russian officials reportedly calling it “radically different” from the deal they’re negotiating with the US. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov even accused Ukraine of trying to “torpedo” peace talks on Russian state TV on Friday.
Peace in the European East?
President Zelensky has revealed some of the details of his plan for peace and expressed his satisfaction that the US and Ukraine were largely in agreement on security guarantees to ensure Russia doesn’t invade again. The deal reportedly includes a “peacetime army” of 800,000 troops funded by Western partners and entry for Ukraine into the European Union, as well as a bilateral security agreement with the US and European military support to Ukraine’s defense. Some European countries have expressed a willingness and readiness to deploy forces to Ukraine. Russia, of course, opposes such militarization of Ukraine, and guaranteeing entry into the European Union – something else Putin doesn’t like – is more complicated than Donald Trump declaring it so.
Ukraine and the US also reportedly agreed on a commitment to release all prisoners of war and detained civilians and to hold elections in Ukraine as soon as possible after peace is achieved.
Perhaps the biggest sticking point, however, is what to do with the contested Donbas region. A previous draft between Russia and the US called for Ukraine to withdraw its presence from Donetsk and the surrounding areas and establish a neutral demilitarized zone. The Ukrainian counterargument, however, was that it couldn’t justify ceding land that the Russians hadn’t fully conquered yet. Mr. Zelensky proposes a compromise: a demilitarized buffer zone created by both Ukraine and Russia withdrawing their troops and ceding some land.
Putin has proven quite stubborn when it comes to the Donetsk area and the larger Donbas region, but recent developments may show he’s willing to give ground elsewhere. A Christmas Day report indicated Russian forces seemed close to losing the city of Kupyansk in northeastern Ukraine, and that foreign mercenaries in the area fighting for Russia have been surrendering. Andrei Kolesnikov, the Kremlin correspondent for one of Russia’s top newspapers, the Kommersant, reported that President Putin briefed some of the country’s top businessmen on a potential deal on Christmas Eve. In the late-night meeting, Putin allegedly said he might be open to swapping some territory controlled by Russia in Ukraine if it meant Ukraine pulling out of Donbas entirely.
This is a significant step back from his previous position that Russia shouldn’t give up any of its hard-earned conquests. According to Kolesnikov, Putin wants all of the Donbas region, but said that outside that area “a partial exchange of territories from the Russian side is not ruled out.”
Russia presently controls about 90% of Donbas, 75% of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, and some small bits of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions – as well as all of the Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. What territories Putin would give up in return remains unknown, but it seems unlikely that Zaporizhzhia would be one of them, as it is home to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
If Ukraine, Russia, the EU, and the US can all actually agree on 90% of President Zelensky’s plan, then peace may indeed finally be on the horizon. But is the remainder really just 10% from the Russian – or even American or European – perspective? Even then, it won’t take 10% of the deal to sink the whole endeavor, especially given Putin’s attitude to date. Just one disagreement will do.
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