Graham Jackson, Reporter
Featured image credit: President of Ukraine (Public Domain)
The Ukrainian army would be capped at 600,000 troops during times of peace; Kyiv would be prevented from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); Russia would be returned most of its frozen foreign assets; and Russia would be allowed to maintain its presence in conquered Ukrainian territory. These are just some of the terms presented in the 28 Point Peace-Plan the United States announced on November 21st.
The Russo-Ukrainian War has been raging since February 24th, 2022. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Russia has killed 40,000 Ukrainian civilians, invaded about 20% of Ukraine’s territory and internally displaced 3.7 million individuals.
Ukraine has been fighting a defensive war at significant cost over the past few years of the conflict with the international community widely condemning the Russian invasion. The recent peace proposal has been criticized by some as a reward to Russia and that it fails to properly secure Ukraine from future invasion.
Germany, France and the United Kingdom gave a separate peace proposal that would allow Ukraine to have a larger standing army and would give it the opportunity to join NATO if it desired. These European nations were not present during the first drafting of the peace deal between the US and Russia, drawing the ire of the officials in each respective country.
In response to the criticism that the peace plan was unfavorable to Kyiv, American officials sat down in Geneva with a Ukrainian delegation and revised the peace plan (it now has only 19 points). According to the Financial Times, when referring to the new proposal, Ukraine’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya said “Very few things are left from the original version,” referring to the new proposal.
These changes could potentially lead to a breakdown in the peace talks. Al Jazeera reported that Moscow was upset with the direction of the peace proposal as the new proposal is likely less beneficial to Russia than the original. Among other changes, it is said that the 600,000 personnel limit on Ukraine’s army has been revised or lifted per Kyiv’s request.
American and Russian officials met earlier this week to discuss the revised plan Washington and Kyiv worked out but have yet to come to an agreement on a new draft. If this peace plan falls through, it would not be the first. This past June: a Russian and Ukrainian dialogue in Istanbul whose intention was to establish a ceasefire, failed to achieve any major breakthrough.
This recent controversy of the peace proposal is likely to add to the growing strain on Ukrainian President Zelensky’s administration which has recently been marred in corruption scandals at the highest level.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has recently dismissed one of his highest ranking officials, Andriy Yermak, after detectives searched his residence. A number of Zelensky’s officials have been accused of being connected to a major embezzlement from a Ukrainian state energy provider.
As the fate of Ukraine is currently being written in the capitals of America and Europe, history may provide precedent to predict the stability of any peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. Following the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, Russia and Ukraine held the vast majority of former Soviet nukes.
The Russian government, wary of a nuclear neighbor, demanded that Ukraine return the nuclear weapons. Ukraine was reluctant to surrender its nukes but eventually disarmed and gave them to Moscow after they were provided security guarantees from the US, UK and Russian Federation and a vow to respect Ukrainian sovereignty. This 1996 agreement is known as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.
The memorandum held until 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, backed separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine and launched a full-scale invasion in 2022. Russia’s repeated violations may undermine their credibility to uphold their end of any peace deal and may hinder any peace deal that places limits on the Ukrainian military.
With the prospect of the peace proposal appearing foggy, the Russo-Ukrainian War may continue to rage on. The peace talks will likely reach a conclusion in the coming days or weeks; however, their result is far from certain.
