{"id":5731,"date":"2025-11-26T23:45:29","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T22:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelgkarnavas.net\/blog\/?p=5731"},"modified":"2025-11-29T19:35:29","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T18:35:29","slug":"putin-trump-peace-plan-part-1-appeasement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelgkarnavas.net\/blog\/2025\/11\/26\/putin-trump-peace-plan-part-1-appeasement\/","title":{"rendered":"The Putin\u2013Trump 28-Point \u201cPeace Plan\u201d: Part 1 – Appeasement by Another Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In the days of our sorrow when others, more powerful, have decided to beggar our ancient country\u2026 It is not we who should be ashamed.<\/p>
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\u2014 Josef Hora<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote><\/p>\n

When the 28-point Putin\u2013Trump \u201cpeace plan<\/a>\u201d surfaced, most of the world reacted with disbelief. Ukraine was given six days to accept it \u2014 an ultimatum masquerading as diplomacy. As reporting accumulated, a clearer picture emerged: the document appears to have been drafted by Putin\u2019s envoy, translated into English, and delivered to Trump\u2019s negotiating team, which adopted and repackaged it as its own. From there, it was presented to President Zelensky as the official U.S. framework for ending the war.<\/p>\n

If Michael D. Weiss\u2019s account in his Bulwark<\/em> interview<\/a> proves accurate, the 28 points were hammered out by Kirill Alexandrovich Dmitriev \u2014 one of Putin\u2019s close associates\u2014together with two real-estate developers, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The draft, written first in Russian and then translated, was passed back to the Kremlin and returned to Witkoff, who has reportedly been advising<\/a> the Russians on how Putin should \u201chandle\u201d Trump, to be presented to the Ukrainians as a U.S. peace proposal.<\/p>\n

As if this were not troubling enough, Vice President Vance then dispatched his close friend and faithful poodle, Secretary of the Army Daniel Patrick Driscoll \u2014 ostensibly in Ukraine to study its innovative drone tactics (where the U.S. lags badly behind) \u2014 to secure his standing in the negotiations \u00a0(lest Rubio\u2019s diplomacy succeed) and promote<\/a> his isolationist goals, by intimidating and pressuring<\/a>\u00a0Kyiv into accepting the core terms of this de facto surrender within six days. Vance, a staunch isolationist, has openly expressed contempt for a strong Euro-Atlantic alliance, the stabilizing role of NATO, or the geopolitical importance of ensuring that Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty is not extinguished by an aggressive neighbor that remains a U.S. adversary.<\/p>\n

More revelations seem inevitable. What is already visible is a sordid sequence of parallel channels, Trump loyalists, and self-styled envoys working tirelessly to serve Trump\u2019s interests by assisting Russia in securing dominance over Ukraine\u2014whether as a pliant satellite or a fully subordinated state.<\/p>\n

The internal confusion within the Trump administration was vaudevillian \u2014 a burlesque of errors, contradictions, and mixed messaging, prancing naked across the global stage. The world watched an uncoordinated U.S. apparatus shuffle toward capitulation, reducing America to a farcical metaphor: an unreliable ally and a transparently pro-Russian interlocutor eager to advance Putin\u2019s designs for redrawing Europe\u2019s security map.<\/p>\n

Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially insisted the plan was merely Russia\u2019s<\/em> opening \u201cwish list\u201d. After Trump pushed for ownership, Rubio reversed himself. Later \u2014 following what he described as a \u201cvery productive\u201d meeting with the Ukrainian delegation\u2014he recast it as the official U.S. framework <\/a>for peace.<\/p>\n

Was Rubio misled by Trump\u2019s self-styled envoys \u2014 Witkoff and Kushner\u2014who crafted the plan in tandem with Dmitriev, their Russian counterpart? (Reports suggest both Rubio and Trump only learned of the \u201cpeace plan\u201d when Dmitriev leaked<\/a> it to the White House\u2013friendly outlet Axios<\/em>.) Or did Rubio mislead the public by first presenting it as a purely Russian proposal while knowing it to be a joint Russian\u2013U.S. production? Rubio remains an internationalist, yes, but one whose fawning and ritual praise of dear leader Trump often overwhelm his better instincts.<\/p>\n

Frankly, the answer hardly matters. What matters is the spectacle: how embarrassingly amateurish, confused, and transparently pro-Russian Trump\u2019s negotiating team appears when set against the seasoned geopolitical operators in Putin\u2019s orbit.<\/p>\n

The asymmetry is not only military\u2014it is epistemic. Russia\u2019s negotiators knew exactly what they were doing. Trump\u2019s team did not. Or perhaps they did, given that several (Witkoff, Kushner, Vance, Driscoll) seem to have had their foot\u2014not merely their thumb\u2014on the scales. More troubling still, the Trump administration has entrusted billionaire businessmen and television personalities with some of the most sensitive levers of government, including peace negotiations. Their ignorance of geopolitics, statecraft, diplomacy, and history is staggering. Their unfamiliarity with Eastern European history, the stakes of the conflict, the logic of coercive diplomacy, and the modern record of Russian hybrid operations is astonishing. Historical illiteracy is not a flaw around the margins; it shapes outcomes. Here it is<\/em> the essence. Appeasement<\/em> is not a metaphor\u2014it is an analytic category grounded in long-observed patterns of misreading autocratic intent.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s own preferences compound the dysfunction. He has openly tilted toward Russia, expressed admiration for Putin, and repeatedly signaled his desire to reduce U.S. support for Ukraine. In that sense, the plan\u2019s architecture is unsurprising. It reflects the worldview of someone who wants Russia to win, wants Ukraine to lose, and wants to present himself as the indispensable broker of the very terms he helped distort.<\/p>\n

The resulting \u201cpeace\u201d framework is pure appeasement. Rubio – seemingly grasping the moment to prove his international chops and avoid being branded as one of Trump\u2019s pro-Russian agents in these negotiations is changing tack<\/a>, delicately distancing himself from the lopsided, Kremlin-approved Dmitriev\u2013Witkoff\u2013Kushner draft\u2014whose authors, incidentally, effectively admit its acceptance would legitimize Russia\u2019s kidnapping of Ukrainian children (Point 24 b and c, combined with Point 26) the very crime for which the ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Putin. The rest of Trump\u2019s circle seems either unaware of the reputational damage they are inflicting on the United States or MAGA-indifferent to it.<\/p>\n

Put plainly, in presenting this ultimatum to Zelensky, Trump was doing Putin\u2019s bidding. He was acting as his errand boy. As an American, I am ashamed. The plan is not merely appeasement or capitulation\u2014it is co-option: the United States aligning itself with Russia to ensure Ukraine\u2019s eventual demise as a sovereign state, along with its culture, language, and identity.<\/p>\n

With the unsurprising exception of Point 1\u2014affirming Ukrainian sovereignty\u2014the remaining 27 points are, in the words of Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Oleksandr Merezhko, \u201cludicrous,\u201d deeply offensive, and strategically incoherent. Among the lowlights:<\/p>\n