Russia has trashed a plan pitched by US President-elect Donald Trump’s team to end the Russia-Ukraine war by deferring Kyiv’s NATO membership in exchange for a ceasefire, according to Russian state-owned media.
Trump’s win in the November presidential election, his repeated criticism of Ukraine and United States funding for Kyiv, and his promise to end the war within a day, once in power, have prompted concerns among NATO allies about the compromises he might demand of Ukraine.
But the Kremlin’s rejection of what is reportedly a key element of the proposal forwarded by Trump’s team for a truce underscores warnings from some analysts who have cautioned against assuming that Russia is necessarily guaranteed an end to the war on its terms.
So what is Trump’s proposal for peace in Ukraine, what has Russia rejected – and why?
What is Trump’s plan for Ukraine?
Trump has been careful not to reveal much about his plan. “I can’t give you those plans because if I give you those plans, I’m not going to be able to use them. They’ll be unsuccessful. Part of it’s surprise,” Trump said in a podcast interview with Lex Fridman in September.
On the campaign trail, Trump made promises of ending the Ukraine war within 24 hours. However, on December 12, he told Time magazine that “the Middle East is an easier problem to handle than what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”
Trump and his key aides have floated some ideas for a truce in Ukraine. Here is what we know:
- On November 6, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Trump’s plans for a truce in Ukraine involve delaying Kyiv’s NATO membership by 20 years, citing three sources close to Trump.
- Trump’s Vice President JD Vance, unveiled potential details of Trump’s plan in an interview for the Shawn Ryan Show aired in September. Vance said the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine would become a “demilitarised zone”, fortified so Russia would not invade again.
- The WSJ report says this demilitarised zone would span nearly 1,290km (800 miles). While it remains unclear who would police the zone, an unnamed member of Trump’s team said “The barrel of the gun is going to be European,” according to the WSJ.
- Vance also suggested that under the plan, Ukraine would have to cede some of its occupied territory to Russia, including parts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia has taken hold of about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory since 2014.
- On November 27, Trump named retired general Keith Kellogg as his special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine war. In April, Kellogg co-authored a strategy paper, suggesting the US could continue to arm Ukraine, contingent on Kyiv agreeing to participate in peace talks with Moscow.
- Kellogg’s paper additionally suggested that NATO could put Ukraine’s membership on hold and Russia could be offered some sanctions relief in exchange for its participation in peace negotiations.
- In the Time magazine interview, Trump criticised Ukraine for launching missiles into Russian territory last month. “I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that?” he said, adding that this would only escalate the war. In late November, Ukraine attacked Russia with long-range weapons manufactured by the US and UK. This came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had pushed the US and UK to allow Ukraine to use the missiles to strike inside Russia, which was previously restricted.
What did Russia say?
At his annual press interaction on December 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected the idea that a deferral in Ukraine’s membership of NATO would be satisfactory enough for Moscow.
Putin said while he does not know specifics of Trump’s plan, current President Joe Biden made a similar suggestion back in 2021, to defer Ukraine’s admission by 10 to 15 years. “In terms of historical distances and timeframes, this is a moment. What difference does it make to us – today, tomorrow, or in 10 years?” he asked, rhetorically, in response to a journalist’s question, according to a Kremlin transcript of the interaction.
Then, on Sunday, the Russian state-owned news agency TASS quoted Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov doubling down on Putin’s rejection of some of Trump’s proposals for Ukraine.
“We are certainly not satisfied with the proposals made by representatives of the president-elect’s team to postpone Ukraine’s membership in NATO for 20 years and to deploy a peacekeeping contingent of ‘UK and European forces’ in Ukraine,” Lavrov told TASS.
Lavrov added that Russia has not yet received any official “signals” from the US on the “Ukrainian settlement”. The Russian diplomat explained that until Trump’s inauguration in Washington on January 20, only Biden’s outgoing administration was authorised to engage with Moscow.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was open to peace talks with Ukraine hosted in Slovakia. Putin hosted Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico in the Kremlin this week. Fico has been sceptical of the European Union’s military support for Ukraine.
But what will Russia do?
“Putin is bluffing, he wants a deal,” said Timothy Ash, an associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, a London-based think tank.
Ash told Al Jazeera that Putin “will play hardball in the lead up to talks rejecting everything,” but that “he needs a deal as cannot sustain a long war given the huge casualties”. And if Trump were to offer Putin a deal in which Russia gets to effectively keep the Ukrainian territory it currently controls — as Vance suggested would be the offer — Moscow, Ash said, would likely accept.
“Trump is in a strong position, Putin is in a weak position,” Ash said. “Trump can sustain a long war as the US wins from huge defence sales with zero US casualties. Let’s hope Trump realises this.”
How has Ukraine reacted?
Trump met Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron on December 7 in Paris. After the trilateral meeting, Trump told the New York Post that Zelenskyy wants a ceasefire. “He wants to make peace. We didn’t talk about the details,” he added.
Ukraine had earlier stressed that any peace deal must involve nullifying Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.
However, in an interview with Sky News published on November 29, Zelenskyy shifted his stance. “If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” he said. “We need to do it fast. And then on the [occupied] territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way.”
“This is a major compromise by Zelenskyy over territory,” Ash told Al Jazeera at the time.
While NATO members have assured that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to joining the alliance, they are wary of admitting Ukraine while it is still at war with Russia. This is because the NATO treaty contains a mutual defence clause, decreeing that all members are considered to be under attack if one member comes under attack. Ukraine’s admission into NATO would imply that all NATO members are at war with Russia.
With Russia rejecting a compromise over NATO membership – which Ukraine gets, but only two decades later – it is unclear how Kyiv and Moscow can return to the negotiating table. NATO membership is the centrepiece of what Zelenskyy has been pushing as his peace plan.
But according to Ash, Zelenskyy might be willing to compromise on NATO membership, too. What Zelenskyy would not compromise on, said Ash, is on the question of Ukraine’s security.
“Ukraine has to be assured that under any deal Putin cannot just invade again,” Ash said. “That means either bilateral security guarantees from the West or cast iron assurances that they will give Ukraine all the tools needed to defend themselves — rather like Israel or South Korea.”
Meanwhile, amid the warmth between Putin and Fico in Moscow last week, Zelenskyy hit out at the Slovak government. On Saturday, he accused Fico of opening a “second energy front” against Kyiv on the orders of Moscow. Russian gas transits through Ukraine into Slovakia, Moldova and Hungary under a deal that expires at the end of this year.
Fico, after his visit to Putin, said Slovakia would consider retaliation against Kyiv if it cuts off gas transfers on January 1, 2025.
