‘For Putin this is obviously a really comfortable way of keeping these big, financial, under-the-table talks going,’ says Ksenia Maximova
A Russian woman living in the UK has described Donald Trump‘s proposed peace deal as “disgusting” and said it was doomed to fail because Vladimir Putin “doesn’t want peace”.
An original 28-point proposal – hatched mostly behind closed doors between the US Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin aides Yuri Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev – has been roundly criticised as skewed toward Moscow’s interests.
Under the plan, Ukraine would cede large swathes of its territory to Russia, slash the size of its army to 600,000 (from about 880,000), and renounce Nato membership. Among the many other carrots for Russia was diplomatic recognition of its territorial gains, the lifting of sanctions, and a welcome back into the G8.
Critics described the plan as tantamount to forcing Ukraine to “sell itself” – sacrificing sovereignty, territorial integrity and defence capabilities under duress.
“The initial points suggested it must have come from Russia,” Ksenia Maximova, director of the Russian Democratic Society in London, told The i Paper.
“It’s such Kremlin rhetoric that it’s really hard to imagine something like that could have been mustered up by someone else. It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that the US took it on. I think it’s quite concerning how little they even tried to hide it.”
The deal also says that of $100bn in frozen Russian assets that will be used to rebuild Ukraine, the US will receive 50 per cent of the profits, with the remainder going to a joint US-Russia fund.
Following outrage from European leaders over the “Russian” deal and US talks with Ukraine, a revised version was thrashed out. During a five-hour meeting on Tuesday, Witkoff and Putin discussed the peace deal in Moscow. Russian officials said it had been “constructive” but “no compromise” had been reached on territorial concessions.
The plan strikes Maximova, 38, as economic at its crux: a financial deal hashed out between Moscow and Washington to serve up Ukraine and its riches.
“Trump even said – ‘we need to sell Ukraine’. It’s pretty disgusting. What I’m hearing is that there’s quite a lot of talk in the US of doing business with Russia and a lot of things are being pre-agreed. So for Putin this is obviously a really comfortable way of keeping these big, financial, under-the-table talks going.”
Could a revised peace plan work? “I think it’s going to fail because Putin does not want peace right now. Trump in his stubborn, bullish way keeps coming back to this. I don’t know how many times he has to attempt it to understand Putin does not want peace. No matter what you do, unless you just hand over half of Ukraine to him, it’s not going to work.”
Maximova said the sentiment among Russian human rights activists in London was the same: “No one is hopeful that it will add up to something constructive.”
“People who are not involved in any anti-war activity, maybe they see it and are hopeful that it would be nice to just end everything one way or another. For people who are involved, even if the war ends we won’t be able to go back home. Until the regime changes, we can’t go back.”
Maximova spent 25 years travelling back and forth between Russia and the UK. Most of her family still live in Russia but she has not returned since 2018.
If the peace negotiations falter, Maximova believes the war will grind on indefinitely. “Speaking to experts, it’s not looking like Russia will be in a complete losing situation any time soon. People are saying the economy is getting worse, and it is, but there are ways to keep it afloat. This can potentially go on for a very long time.”
‘It’s outrageous – Ukraine would be torn to pieces’
Yuliya Yurchenko, a senior lecturer in political economy at the University of Greenwich, said that the agreement did not read as a peace plan “but as a capitulation plan and a precondition for future conflict”.
Yurchenko, a Ukrainian who has been studying Ukrainian- Russian relations for two decades, criticised the proposal as a “Russian wish list”, but noted the “preferential” US terms, too, including “investment and resource exploration rights”.
“It’s outrageous in a lot of different ways. Ukraine would be completely torn to pieces. Where it wasn’t torn to pieces by Russia, the rest of its resources, sovereignty and autonomy will be taken by the United States,” she said.
Yurchenko said the proposal “solidifies the economic interests” seen in the US-Ukraine minerals deal signed this year. “Regardless of whether Russia or Ukraine controls parts of Ukraine, if the agreement becomes reality the US will still have access to those resources. It’s really brutal, almost 19th-century logic.”
Even the watered-down versions favoured Russia and undermined Ukrainian sovereignty, she said. “What would look acceptable to Ukrainians is a plan where Russia doesn’t get to decide what happens to Ukraine.”
Yurchenko, , who has just returned from a visit to Ukraine, said people there were utterly exhausted and would welcome a ceasefire while the plan was hashed out. But the US proposal had sparked real anger, she said. “There’s a sense of betrayal. Nobody is excited about this. This is an outrageous proposal. Ukraine is being shipped down the river.”
“On the front line and in the cities – constant power cuts, shelling – it’s really draining and it’s almost four years of this. People are exhausted and surveys show that. Surveys also show that the overwhelming majority of people are unwilling to accept any territorial concessions. They are unwilling to accept that Russia will not be punished.”
Some versions of the plan include an amnesty for both sides. “Russia has perpetrated war crimes, ecocide and genocide – they cannot be allowed to walk away from this without any sanctions or consequences,” Yurchenko said. “Reparations need to be paid. Russia needs to pay for reconstruction.”
Your next read
For what it demanded not just of Ukraine, but of the other parties involved, the peace plan is a “no go, it’s dead in the water,” she added. “It’s so unhinged. Nothing serious is going to come out of it. It’s just going to be a lot of hot air and wasted energy.”
“The sentiment is if there was a peace plan that’s actually practical and could save lives and bring peace, it would be great. But that’s not what we’re looking at. People want peace. They just know that what they’re looking at is not peace, it’s an insult.”
As an expert whose been studying Ukrainian- Russian relations for two decades, she warns that “we are already in the middle of the third world war.”
“How destructive it will be depends on what happens in Ukraine. It can be stopped here or it will continue.”
