A Peace Plan Written in Two Languages
Good Times Bad Times, the Polish geopolitical analysis channel, walks through the leaked 28-point peace proposal for ending the Russo-Ukrainian war. The plan, reported by Axios in November, was negotiated primarily between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund. What makes this analysis particularly valuable is its side-by-side comparison of the original American-Russian draft with the European revisions introduced by the E3 -- France, Germany, and the United Kingdom -- during subsequent talks in Geneva.
The result is less a single peace plan than a document that reads differently depending on which version one holds. And that divergence reveals something important about the fault lines running beneath the entire negotiation.
Security Guarantees That Guarantee Nothing
The plan's most consequential provision is also its weakest. Security guarantees for Ukraine are described as resembling NATO's Article 5, but the analysis notes a critical distinction.
The guarantees are meant to resemble Article 5 of NATO, but according to legal experts, the similarity is largely cosmetic. In practice, the guarantees would not obligate anyone to take action.
This is the central tension of any deal that keeps Ukraine out of NATO while promising it will be protected. Article 5 works because it is backed by integrated military command structures, forward-deployed forces, and decades of institutional commitment. A standalone security guarantee, no matter how robustly worded, lacks all of that scaffolding. The E3's revision -- replacing "reliable" with "robust" -- is a diplomatic gesture, not a structural fix.
The analysis does not dwell on this point long enough. If the guarantees are discretionary and non-binding, then the entire framework rests on the assumption that Russia will honor its commitments voluntarily. Given that this war began precisely because existing commitments -- including the Budapest Memorandum -- proved unenforceable, the circularity is hard to ignore.
Follow the Money
Where the original draft reveals its authorship most clearly is in the financial provisions. Of roughly 300 billion dollars in frozen Russian sovereign assets, the American-Russian version proposes redirecting 100 billion to Ukraine's reconstruction -- with 50 percent of the profits flowing to the United States. Another 200 billion would be channeled into a joint American-Russian "investment vehicle." Europe, meanwhile, would be asked to contribute an additional 100 billion of its own funds.
The arithmetic is striking. Europe would fund half of Russia's reparations using European money, while frozen European-held Russian assets would bankroll US-Russian business ventures. The analysis captures European irritation at this arrangement without overstating it.
Not only would the EU cover half of Russia's reparations, but European frozen assets would be used to fund US-Russian projects. And the idea of Washington receiving 50% of the profits from rebuilding Ukraine raises eyebrows.
The E3 response was to delete the entire financial section and replace it with a single principle: Ukraine gets fully reconstructed, Russia pays through its frozen assets, and those assets stay frozen until Russia compensates the damage. It is a cleaner formulation, but also one that Moscow has no incentive to accept, since it transforms frozen assets from a bargaining chip into a permanent penalty.
Territory and the Line of Contact
On the question that matters most to Ukrainians -- territory -- the original draft concedes Crimea and the full Luhansk and Donetsk regions to Russia de facto, with the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions divided along the current line of contact. The E3 pushes back, refusing to hand over parts of the Donbas that Ukraine still controls and insisting on division strictly along existing positions.
This distinction matters enormously in practical terms. Ukrainian forces still hold portions of Donetsk Oblast, including significant urban areas. The original draft would require Ukraine to withdraw from territory it currently defends -- a concession that goes beyond freezing the conflict and actively rewards Russian aggression. The European revision at least preserves the principle that neither side gains territory it has not already taken by force, even if that principle itself is a bitter one for Kyiv.
The Window of Opportunity -- For Whom?
The analysis makes its sharpest observation when it steps back from the provisions to consider their strategic implications. Rather than treating the plan as a path to lasting peace, it frames it as a potential breathing space that could benefit Russia more than Ukraine.
Reintegration into the global economy, renewed cooperation with the United States, weak security guarantees for Kyiv, and minimal reparations all create a scenario in which the Witkoff plan could serve as a window for Russia to rebuild its strength. That window could last three, five, or ten years, after which Moscow may return for a rematch.
This is the counterpoint that many Western proponents of a negotiated settlement prefer to avoid. A ceasefire that lifts sanctions and reintegrates Russia economically while leaving Ukraine with non-binding security guarantees creates asymmetric recovery conditions. Russia rebuilds its war machine with restored oil revenues and renewed trade; Ukraine rebuilds its cities with borrowed money and the hope that discretionary guarantees will hold.
The counterargument, which the analysis acknowledges implicitly, is that Ukraine's current trajectory is also unsustainable. Chronic mobilization shortfalls, rising casualties, and dependence on American support that could evaporate with any shift in Washington's political winds make the status quo its own form of slow deterioration. A bad deal now might still be preferable to a worse position later -- the classic dilemma of wartime negotiation.
Corruption as Context
The analysis introduces Ukraine's domestic corruption scandal -- centered on the state nuclear energy company Energoatom, with links to associates of President Zelensky -- as a factor that may be shaping the negotiating environment. The implication is that Washington may be leveraging Kyiv's political vulnerability to extract concessions.
Zelensky's own statement, quoted at length, captures the pressure he faces from multiple directions.
We are now living through one of the most difficult moments in our history. Right now, Ukraine may face a very tough choice: either the loss of dignity or the risk of losing a key partner. Either a difficult 28-point plan or an extremely harsh winter, the harshest one, and further risks ahead.
The framing of the choice as dignity versus survival is revealing. It suggests Zelensky understands that any deal on offer would require Ukraine to accept terms that its population would find deeply unjust -- and that refusing those terms means facing a winter without guaranteed American support. This is not a negotiation between equals. It is a calculation about which form of loss is most survivable.
What the Analysis Misses
For all its thoroughness, the piece underweights one critical variable: enforcement. Even the strongest version of the plan -- the E3 revision with its more binding language and financial penalties -- lacks a mechanism for compelling compliance. Who monitors the ceasefire? Who adjudicates violations? The plan mentions a peace monitoring council chaired by Donald Trump, but monitoring and enforcement are fundamentally different activities. The Minsk agreements had monitoring too, through the OSCE. They failed not because no one was watching, but because no one was willing to act on what they saw.
The analysis also treats the E3 revisions as a meaningful counterweight to the original draft without fully reckoning with European leverage. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom can propose amendments, but if the deal ultimately depends on American willingness to provide security guarantees and Russian willingness to accept constraints, European revisions function more as commentary than as binding terms.
Bottom Line
The 28-point plan represents the most detailed framework yet for ending the Russo-Ukrainian war, and its dual versions -- one shaped by American-Russian negotiation, the other revised by European allies -- expose the competing interests that any settlement must reconcile. The original draft reads as favorable to Moscow: weak guarantees, generous territorial concessions, financial arrangements that benefit the United States and Russia at European expense. The E3 revisions improve the terms for Ukraine without solving the fundamental problem: non-binding security guarantees cannot substitute for alliance membership, and a ceasefire that restores Russia's economic strength while leaving Ukraine outside NATO creates conditions for the next war rather than preventing it. As the analysis concludes, this agreement would not remove the specter of war from Europe. It would suspend it.