The modern history of diplomacy is usually written in treaties, summits, and carefully worded communiqués hammered out by people who know the difference between a demilitarized zone and a zoning variance. But the history of the second Trump administration is being written in term sheets. On November 21, 2025, the world learned exactly what happens when you outsource the fate of a sovereign European nation to a golf buddy and a hedge fund manager. The much-touted, twenty-eight point Ukraine “peace plan” has finally leaked, and it is not a blueprint for ending a war. It is a liquidation sale. It is a Moscow-tilted business deal that treats the borders of Eastern Europe with the same reverence one might accord a distressed commercial property in Atlantic City.
This document was not crafted by the State Department. It was not reviewed by the National Security Council. It was not debated by scholars of Eurasian history. According to reporting from the Financial Times and corroborated by the Washington Post, this roadmap to surrender was hammered out by Steve Witkoff, a Trump real estate ally whose expertise lies in luxury condos and tax incentives, and Kirill Dmitriev, the chief of the Russian sovereign wealth fund. It is a joint venture between Mar-a-Lago and the Kremlin, a contract where the only signature required is the one that signs over the deed to the Donbas.
The plan reads less like a diplomatic breakthrough and more like a Kremlin wish list that was run through Google Translate and printed on Trump Organization letterhead. It is a masterclass in cynical realism, a document that strips away the veneer of “values” and “democracy” to reveal the raw, transactional rot beneath. It proposes to lock in Russian control over Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. It allows Moscow to keep much of the territory it has seized in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, effectively rewarding the invasion with a permanent land grant. It forces Ukraine to withdraw from the heavily fortified areas that currently shield central Ukraine, stripping the country of its armor while the wolf is still pacing on the porch.
But the territorial concessions are just the opening bid. The plan goes further, demanding that Kyiv “enshrine in its constitution” a vow never to join NATO. This is not just a policy change; it is a demand for permanent, structural humiliation. It requires Ukraine to slash its army from roughly 900,000 to 600,000 troops, essentially firing the security guards while the burglars are still loading the van. It forbids foreign bases. It demands snap elections within one hundred days, a timeline designed to destabilize a government at war. And in exchange for this total capitulation, Ukraine receives vague “security guarantees” that no sentient observer believes Donald Trump would honor, alongside a meaningless pledge of “non-aggression” from Russia.
We are being asked to believe that Vladimir Putin, a man whose entire foreign policy is built on aggression, will suddenly respect a piece of paper because Steve Witkoff asked him nicely. It is a proposition so absurd that it circles back around to being insulting.
The Secretary of State as PR Flack
The sheer duplicity of the administration’s rollout was on full display at the Halifax Security Forum. While publicly defending the plan as a bona fide U.S. initiative, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was allegedly telling senators in private briefings that the document was basically a “Russian proposal.” This is the defining dynamic of the current era. The private truth is a horror show of capitulation, while the public spin is a patriotic song and dance. Rubio, a man who once styled himself as a hawk, has been reduced to the role of a PR flack for a Russian wishlist. He and the State Department rushed to social media to insist that the plan simply incorporates Moscow’s input as a “starting point,” a euphemism that does a lot of heavy lifting. When the “starting point” is “give me half your house and shoot your dog,” the negotiation is already over.
Senators emerging from the Halifax briefing were described by NBC and the AP as shell-shocked. They heard the truth in the room—that this deal originated in Moscow—and then watched the administration lie about it on Twitter. It creates a sense of vertigo, a realization that the U.S. government is now operating as a subsidiary of the very power it spent seventy years containing. The “peace plan” is not designed to secure peace. It is designed to secure a win for the President, a profit for his friends, and a victory for Vladimir Putin.
The pressure campaign to force this deal down Zelensky’s throat is being conducted with the subtlety of a mob shakedown. Donald Trump stood on the White House lawn and told reporters that President Volodymyr Zelensky must either accept the plan by Thanksgiving or “fight his little heart out” without U.S. support. The phrase “fight his little heart out” is a masterpiece of condescension. It reduces the desperate, bloody struggle of a nation fighting for its existence to the tantrum of a child. It frames the victim as the problem. Aides confirm that the White House has been leaning hard on Kyiv to swallow concessions that Ukraine has long rejected. They are holding the supply of ammunition hostage, demanding that Zelensky sign his own political death warrant in exchange for a few more months of survival.
The Grift Behind the Curtain
But to understand why this plan exists, you have to look past the maps and look at the money. Anne Applebaum’s reporting in The Atlantic cracked the code. The plan includes a provision for the U.S. and Russia to seize control of about one hundred billion dollars in frozen Russian state assets. The proposal calls for the U.S. side to claim “50 percent of the profits” from investing that money in Ukraine.
This is the grift. This is the engine driving the “peace.”
Most of those frozen assets are actually held in European banks. European taxpayers are currently paying most of the costs of the war. Yet, under the Witkoff-Dmitriev plan, Europe is effectively cut out of the decision-making loop while Washington and Moscow split the loot. It is a heist disguised as diplomacy. The plan also outlines a long-term economic cooperation pact covering energy, rare earth mining in the Arctic, AI, data centers, and infrastructure. This list reads like a who’s who of oligarch enrichment. It is a framework for turning the post-war reconstruction of Eastern Europe into a trough for the politically connected.
The vision here is terrifyingly clear. Trump and Putin are not enemies; they are competitors in the same marketplace of illiberal kleptocracy. This deal is an agreement to divide the market. Russia gets the land and the political control. The U.S. (or rather, the specific investors allied with the Trump administration) gets the mineral rights, the data center contracts, and a cut of the frozen asset profits. Ukraine is merely the venue where the transaction takes place.
The European Shock
The reaction from European leaders has been one of profound shock. They were presented with this plan after the fact, told to get on board or risk a total U.S. pullback. The alliance that has held the West together since 1949 is being treated like a distressed asset to be liquidated. NATO is being sidelined. The European Union is being ignored. The message from Washington is clear. We are done with alliances. We are done with values. We are open for business, and the business is selling out our friends.
For Ukraine, the horror is existential. They are being strong-armed into ceding territory where Russia has already carried out torture, mass repression, and cultural erasure. To sign this deal is to abandon millions of Ukrainians to a regime that has proven it does not view them as human. It is to validate the rape, the murder, and the kidnapping of children. It is to say that these crimes are acceptable prices to pay for cheap gas and a soaring stock market.
Experts warn that the deal would leave Ukraine weakened and open to a renewed invasion in a few years. By slashing the army and banning foreign bases, the plan removes the only deterrents that have kept Kyiv free. It invites Russia to rearm, regroup, and finish the job at a time of its choosing. This is not peace. It is a pause. It is a halftime break for the aggressor.
The Logic of the Transaction
The “peace plan” reveals the core logic of the Trump worldview. There is no right or wrong, only strength and weakness. There is no international law, only leverage. In this worldview, Ukraine is weak, and therefore it deserves to lose. Russia is strong (or at least ruthless), and therefore it deserves to win. The United States, under Trump, is not a guardian of liberty but a broker of power. We are the middleman taking a commission on the dismemberment of a democracy.
The involvement of Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev is the key that unlocks the entire mystery. Why would a real estate developer be writing a peace treaty? Because to these men, a country is just a collection of assets. It has land. It has resources. It has labor. The people living there are incidental. The history is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is who owns the deed at the end of the day.
This is why the plan focuses so heavily on economic cooperation. It is setting up the post-war plunder. It is ensuring that when the dust settles, the right people own the lithium mines and the data centers. It is a vision of the future where democracy is an impediment to profit, and where autocrats are the preferred partners because they can sign contracts without worrying about environmental impact statements or human rights reviews.
The ultimate tragedy is that this plan will likely work, at least in the short term. Zelensky has no good options. Without U.S. support, his military collapses. He is being forced to choose between a slow death by attrition or a quick death by signature. Trump knows this. Putin knows this. They are squeezing him from both sides, playing a game of geopolitical bad cop/bad cop.
But the long-term cost will be catastrophic. By validating Putin’s aggression, the U.S. is teaching every dictator on the planet that war crimes pay. We are telling China that Taiwan is available for the right price. We are telling Iran that boundaries are negotiable. We are dismantling the rules-based international order and replacing it with a mafia ethos where the big families divide up the neighborhood and the little shopkeepers just have to pay protection money.
The “peace” that Trump is selling is a mirage. It will not last. It cannot last because it is built on a foundation of injustice and instability. A weakened, humiliated Ukraine will remain a source of conflict. An emboldened Russia will not stop at the Dnieper. The war will return, bloodier and more dangerous than before. But by then, the initial investors will have cashed out. The contracts will have been signed. The profits will have been booked. And the people of Ukraine will be left to pay the bill with their lives.
We are watching the transformation of American foreign policy into a protection racket. The President is not leading the free world; he is liquidating it. He is selling off the parts to the highest bidder and calling it “the art of the deal.” And as the winter sets in over Kyiv, the cold reality is that the United States has decided that freedom is just another asset class, and right now, it’s time to sell.
The Fine Print of the Apocalypse
The most haunting detail of the Witkoff-Dmitriev plan is not the land or the money, but the timeline. Snap elections within one hundred days. In a country that has been bombed, displaced, and traumatized, holding an election in three months is a recipe for chaos. It is designed to ensure that the current government fails. It is designed to install a compliant regime that will implement the surrender without complaint. It is a feature, not a bug. The plan requires the destruction of Ukrainian democracy because a democratic Ukraine would never agree to these terms. The ballot box is being used as a weapon, a final cynical twist in a plan that views the will of the people as an obstacle to be overcome. The deal is done. The fix is in. And the only thing left to do is count the money and bury the dead.