Any details on the international relationships permitted for rump-Ukraine? Would they be allowed to join the EU? Could they become a privileged NATO partner, even if not an outright member of the alliance? Could rump-Ukraine host NATO troops on its territory? (The latter point would help a ton with giving credibility to the "US intervenes if Russia invades any further" part of the deal.) And what about guarantees for Ukraine that Russia will not impede shipment on the Dnieper river?
Either way, I'm sceptical. As I've already said months ago, the specifics of security guarantees for Ukraine will be the real crux of any negotiated peace. I have a hard time imagining that isolationist Trump, of all people, is the one who would believably commit the US to war against Russia over a shithole country like Ukraine. Just to name one obvious example: what if Russia partly violates the deal and deploys troops to the demilitarized buffer zone which will be under its control? Would Trump seriously declare war on Russia over that? We all know the answer, don't we?
I welcome this initiative and think the rough contours make sense, but there's still a ton of heavy lifting to be done before an actual breakthrough toward peace is achieved.
I don't think the proposal has been made public yet so we're just getting scraps of leaks so far. And they aren't clear:
Quote
Under the proposal, Russia would be granted de facto control of Ukraine’s Donbas region despite Ukraine still holding around 14.5 percent of that territory. The area that Kyiv withdraws from would be considered a demilitarized zone, meaning Russia could not position troops there. The current lines of control in the Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would largely be frozen in place, with Russia returning some land subject to negotiations. And while Ukraine would not be required to recognize Moscow’s claimed territory, the United States and other countries would accept that Crimea and the Donbas are lawfully part of Russia.
In exchange, Washington would provide security guarantees for Ukraine and the rest of Europe to ward against future Russian aggression. Kyiv may also be forced to give up some weapons and cut the size of its armed forces, per Reuters. It is unclear if the deal paves a pathway for Ukraine to eventually join the European Union or NATO, a condition that Moscow vehemently rejects.
I don't think there's any way they would be allowing the non-starter Ukraine-in-NATO alongside whatever degree of security guarantee while cutting military buildup is called for, because that would be contradictory/redundant. If they're just going to join NATO and have an Article V alliance security guarantee and be stationing forwards NATO weapons systems, it would completely moot any such security guarantee while negating the disarmament. We may not know the exacts here, but we can predict with 99.9% certainty its some anti-NATO expansion clause.