POLITICO Europe - November 28, 2025 - by Jamie Dettmer - This might be the best Ukraine can hope for

 

This might be the best Ukraine can hope for

America’s divisive “peace plan” that heavily favors Russia might still be all Kyiv can get.

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In effect, the country has been fighting to be free of Russia since 2014, and right now, these times are, indeed, trying Ukrainian souls. | Sergey Kozlov/EPA

Unpacked

November 28, 2025 11:04 am CET

By Jamie Dettmer

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor and a foreign affairs columnist at POLITICO Europe.

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote pamphleteer Thomas Paine in the dark days of December 1776, as America’s war to free itself of the British seemed doomed. In a bid to lift flagging spirits, he continued: “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

That victory was sorely in doubt for much of the war, but the revolutionaries persevered, and with French assistance — which has often been downplayed since — they triumphed after eight years of brutish conflict.

Ukraine’s struggle has been longer. In effect, the country has been fighting to be free of Russia since 2014, and right now, these times are, indeed, trying Ukrainian souls.

As it stands, there is scant grounds for optimism that, for all its heroism, Ukraine can turn things around. The country is unlikely to emerge from its most perilous winter of the war in a stronger position, better able to withstand what’s being foisted upon it. In fact, it could be in a much weaker state — on the battlefield, the home front, and in terms of its internal politics.

Indeed, as it tries to navigate its way through America’s divisive “peace plan,” this might be the best Ukraine can hope for — or at least some variation that doesn’t entail withdrawing from the territory in eastern Ukraine it has managed to retain.

On the battlefield, Ukraine’s forces are currently hard pressed and numerically disadvantaged. Or, as lawmaker Mariana Bezuhla recently argued: “Ukrainian commanders simply can’t keep up” and are “being jerked around within a framework set by the enemy.”

Meanwhile, on the home front, pummeling Russian drone attacks and airstrikes are degrading the country’s power system and wrecking its natural gas infrastructure, which keeps 60 percent of Ukrainians warm during the frigid winter months.

The country is also running out of money. It’s hard to see a Europe mired in debt providing the $250 billion Kyiv will need in cash and arms to sustain the fight for another four years — and that’s on top of the $140 billion reparations loan that might be offered if Belgium lifts its veto on using Russia’s immobilized assets held in Brussels.

If all that weren’t enough, Ukraine is being roiled by a massive corruption scandal that appears to implicate Ukrainian presidential insiders, sapping the confidence of allies and Ukrainians alike. It’s also providing those in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement with ammunition to argue that Washington should be done with Ukraine.

And now, of course, Kyiv is having to cope with a contentious U.S. effort to end Russia’s war, which has been advanced in such a chaotic diplomatic process that it wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of “The West Wing.”

At times, negotiations have descended into farce, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio forswearing the original peace plan one minute, saying it came from Russia and not a Trump administration proposal, only to swiftly backtrack. And earlier this week, a Reuters report suggested the 28-point plan was, in fact, modeled on a Russian proposal that Kremlin officials shared with their U.S. counterparts in mid-October.

Meanwhile, on the home front, pummeling Russian drone attacks and airstrikes are degrading the country’s power system and wrecking its natural gas infrastructure. | Mykola Tys/EPA

But for all the buffoonery — including reports that Special Envoy Steve Witkoff coached high-ranking Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov on how Russian President Vladimir Putin should speak to Trump — a tweaked 19-point version of the “peace plan” may well be the best Ukraine can realistically expect, even though it heavily favors Russia.

As this column has argued before, a Ukrainian triumph was always unlikely — that is if by triumph one means the restoration of the country’s 1991 borders and NATO membership. This isn’t through any fault of Ukraine, the David in the fight against Goliath, but rather that of Kyiv’s Western allies, who were never clear-sighted or practical in their thinking, let alone ready to do what was necessary to defeat Russia’s revanchism and vanquish a Putin regime heedless of the death toll of even its own troops.

Despite their high-blown rhetoric, at no stage in the conflict have Ukraine’s allies agreed on any clear war aims. Some pressed for a debate, among them former Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who was worried about a mismatch between Western magniloquence and what the U.S. and Europe were actually prepared to do and give. “We talk about victory, and we talk about standing with Ukraine to the very end — but let’s also talk about this,” he told POLITICO in a 2023 interview. But that debate never happened because of fears it would disunite allies.

Nonetheless, Western leaders continued to characterize the war as a contest between good and evil, with huge stakes for democracy. They cast it as a struggle not only for territory but between liberal and autocratic values, and as one with global consequences. But in that case, why be restrained in what you supply? Why hold back on long-range munitions and tanks? Why delay supplying F-16s? And why prevent Ukraine from using Western-supplied long-range missiles to strike deeper into Russia?

Or, as Ukraine’s former top commander Gen. Valery Zaluzhny fumed in the Washington Post: “To save my people, why do I have to ask someone for permission what to do on enemy territory?”

For former Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, for all its talk of standing with Ukraine for as long as it takes, the West never really grasped the war’s importance or consequences: “You cannot win a war where Russia clearly knows what its strategic goal is in every detail; [where] Ukraine knows what its strategic goal is in every detail; but [where] the West, without whom Ukraine cannot win, does not know what it is fighting for,” he told POLITICO last year. “This is the real tragedy of this war.”

At times, negotiations have descended into farce, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio forswearing the original peace plan one minute, saying it came from Russia and not a Trump administration proposal, only to swiftly backtrack. | Martial Trezzini/EPA

The currently discussed 19-point plan is, of course, an improvement on the original 28-point plan — nonetheless, it is an ugly and shameful one. But this is what happens if you run down your military forces and arms production for decades, fail to draw enforceable red lines and don’t ask hard questions before making grand promises.

For Ukraine, such a poor deal that leaves it with weak security guarantees, without 20 percent of its territory and prohibits it from joining NATO, will have great domestic consequences and carry the high likelihood of civil strife. It isn’t hard to see how the army and its veterans might react. Many of them will see it as a stab in the back, an enraging betrayal that needs to be punished.

It will also mean rewarding Putin’s thuggishness and no real accountability for the bestial nature of his army’s atrocious behavior or the unlawful, detestable deportations from occupied parts of Ukraine to Russia. And it will, no doubt, embolden the axis of autocrats.

The American Revolution had lasting global consequences — so, too, will this war.