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For a brief period, the former US president seemed to take a strong approach regarding the Ukrainian conflict. Following making statements of "significant ramifications" last August in case Vladimir Putin persisted obstructing truce discussions, he eventually enacted substantial restrictions on Russia's two largest oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft. This move seriously impacted Putin's capacity to support his military invasion in Ukraine.

Yet, with his latest comprehensive peace initiative for Ukraine, reportedly developed by American and Russian officials excluding Ukrainian or EU input, the former president has seemingly returned to his Russia-friendly approach.

Rewarding Invasion

This proposal would effectively reward Putin for invading a sovereign nation while placing Ukraine's political freedom in danger. Although ringing proclamations that "Ukraine's sovereignty will be affirmed", significant aspects of the plan actually undermine that same autonomy. Seen as a Russian ideal would probably be a disaster for Ukraine.

Demonstrating his corporate past, the former president continues to treat the war as a mere territorial dispute, like ceding Russia a portion of Ukrainian land will appease the president. But, Putin's military campaign is not merely about controlling a damaged area of economically weakened territory in Ukraine's east. Rather, it is about the nation's political system – and the Russian leader's apparent intention to eliminate it so it ceases to serves as an attractive model for the Russian people of the accountable leadership that his deepening authoritarian rule denies them.

Land Surrenders

Although maintaining in position the already separated regions of these areas, the initiative would require Ukraine to surrender the whole Donetsk province. In addition to benefiting Russia with territory that its forces have been failed to seize in more than a decade of fighting, this concession would render Ukrainian military defenses dangerously undermined.

This region is the place of the nation's much-vaunted "fortress belt", the entrenched defensive positions that constitute a critical obstacle to enemy progress. The proposal would have the Ukrainian military abandon these defenses, leaving Putin a unobstructed path to Kyiv if he later opt to resume the conflict.

Military Restrictions

Additionally, in a move that would enable renewed conflict easier for the Russian military, Trump would force the nation to cut the scale of its military from their current approximately 800,000 soldiers to a cap of 600,000. Notably, the proposal imposes no such constraints on the invading army.

In what appears as a concession to Putin's efforts to depict Ukraine's legitimate government as radicals, Trump's plan declares: "Every radical doctrine and actions must be condemned and forbidden." Seemingly to highlight this aspect, it requires that "The nation will hold elections in three months" of a ceasefire agreement. At the same time, the proposal imposes no requirement that Putin risk his regime by allowing votes in Russia.

Security Guarantees

To be sure, the initiative includes Russia promise not to "attack other states" and to "incorporate in legislation its position of non-aggression towards European nations and the Ukrainian people". But given that Putin has broken similar treaties in the past – for example the 1994 Budapest memorandum, in which Russia pledged to recognize the nation's territorial integrity in exchange for giving up its former Soviet nuclear arsenal, and the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements, in which Moscow agreed to a halt in fighting and a handback of captured territory in eastern Ukraine to the government – how should the international community have confidence in Putin on this occasion?

That is why Ukraine has been so determined on international security guarantees. While the initiative threatens a "immediate coordinated defense action" if Russia resume its aggression, and states that "The nation will receive strong protection assurances", the particulars include fuzzy to troubling. The proposal would not just deny the nation accession to NATO but also prevent alliance nations from positioning military personnel on the nation's land, thus precluding the peacekeeping contingent, reportedly commanded by the UK and France, on which Ukraine had been counting to deter Russia from rebuilding his diminished troops, re-equipping, and reinvading.

World Concern

An additional supplementary accord reportedly would provide Ukraine with a alliance-like security guarantee, in which any later "serious, deliberate, and continuous aggression" by Russia on Ukraine "will be treated as an assault jeopardizing the tranquility of the transatlantic community." This implies a defense action. Yet in contrast to a capable national defense – the nation's primary defense against additional hostilities – the success of the parallel accord would hinge on the commitment of Western powers, like Trump, to act militarily to Russia's hostilities, something they have {not