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Initially, Donald Trump seemed to embrace a strong stance regarding the Ukrainian conflict. Following issuing statements of "significant consequences" during the summer should Vladimir Putin persisted blocking ceasefire negotiations, the former president ultimately enacted substantial restrictions on Russia's two largest petroleum corporations, these major energy companies. This action substantially impacted Putin's capability to support his aggression in the region.

Yet, via his newly presented detailed peace proposal for Ukraine, that was drafted by US and Russian diplomats excluding Ukrainian or EU involvement, Trump has seemingly reverted to his Russia-friendly position.

Benefiting Military Action

The former president's initiative would in practice favor Putin for invading a sovereign nation while placing the country's democracy in peril. Despite strong proclamations that "Ukraine's independence will be confirmed", large portions of the initiative effectively undermine that very independence. Seen as a Russian ideal would likely be a disaster for Ukraine.

Demonstrating his corporate background, the former president continues to treat the Ukrainian conflict as a mere border issue, as if handing Putin a portion of Ukrainian land will satisfy the president. Yet, Russia's war is not merely about dominating a charred region of deindustrialized land in Ukraine's east. Rather, it is about Ukraine's democracy – and the Russian leader's clear desire to weaken it so it no longer functions as an appealing model for the Russian citizens of the accountable leadership that his growing dictatorship withholds them.

Territorial Giveaways

While freezing in position the presently separated oblasts of these areas, Trump's initiative would require the nation to abandon the whole this eastern territory. Beyond benefiting Russia with land that its military have been unsuccessful to occupy in more than a lengthy period of fighting, this surrender would make Ukrainian military defenses critically weakened.

The area is the place of Ukraine's much-vaunted "defensive line", the entrenched protective structures that constitute a key impediment to invading forces. The proposal would have the Ukrainian military leave these positions, leaving Russian forces a clear route to Kyiv if he eventually decide to restart the war.

Armed Forces Reductions

Then, in a step that would make additional conflict more feasible for Russia, the plan would require the nation to diminish the scale of its armed forces from their current 800,000 to 850,000 personnel to a maximum of six hundred thousand. Significantly, the initiative imposes no equivalent limits on Russia's military.

Seemingly as a accommodation to Russia's attempts to characterize Ukraine's chosen by the people government as Nazis, Trump's plan asserts: "Every extremist ideology and actions must be rejected and prohibited." As if to emphasize this point, it insists that "Ukraine will hold elections in three months" of a ceasefire agreement. Meanwhile, the proposal places no requirement that the Russian leader risk his dictatorship by allowing democratic processes in Russia.

Defense Guarantees

Certainly, the proposal makes Russia commit not to "enter neighboring countries" and to "enshrine in legislation its stance of non-violence towards European nations and Ukraine". However given that Putin has broken equivalent agreements in the history – including the 1994 Budapest memorandum, in which Russia committed to recognize the nation's sovereignty in exchange for relinquishing its Soviet-era atomic arms, and the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements, in which Russia promised to a halt in fighting and a handback of captured areas in the region to the government – how should we trust this commitment on this occasion?

This explains the Ukrainian government has been so insistent on western security guarantees. While the initiative threatens a "immediate unified defense action" should the Russian Federation restart its invasion, and includes that "The nation will receive strong defense commitments", the particulars vary from vague to concerning. The plan would not only prevent Ukraine alliance membership but also prevent member states from deploying military personnel on Ukraine's soil, thus preventing the peacekeeping contingent, presumptively led by Britain and France, on which the Ukrainian government had been relying to prevent Russia from restoring his weakened forces, restocking, and attacking again.

World Concern

An additional side agreement according to sources would provide Ukraine with a Nato-style security guarantee, in which any later "major, deliberate, and sustained armed attack" by the Russian Federation on the country "will be treated as an attack jeopardizing the stability and safety of the allied countries." This implies a defense action. However different from a strong Ukrainian military – the nation's primary deterrent against additional hostilities – the effectiveness of the supplementary deal would depend on the commitment of Western powers, such as Trump, to react through arms to Russia's aggression, a response they have {not