The two real estate developers, President Donald Trump and his envoy Steven Witkoff, gave Ukraine a deadline. By the American Thanksgiving holiday, Ukraine had to accept their plan to give Vladimir Putin key elements of Ukrainian sovereignty or suffer the loss of American support. A few days later, the deadline and terms were softened, but the president’s pro-Putin tilt is still evident.

If Kyiv capitulates, will Ukraine then still exist? Yes, as a ragged shell of its former self—like Czechoslovakia after UK, French, and Italian leaders at Munich 1938 gave Hitler the very region, the Sudetenland, that had been heavily fortified to thwart a Nazi invasion. Effectively disarmed and jilted by its nominal allies (including Stalin’s USSR), Czechoslovakia did not fight in 1939 to keep Germany from dividing and occupying what remained. British PM Neville Chamberlain got peace in his time, but it lasted only a year. This is the kind of future that looms if Ukrainians surrender to Trump and Putin. Much of Europe and probably the United States will suffer, sooner if not later.

Trump’s ultimatum warns that American support will stop if Kyiv rejects the deal. But how helpful was that assistance? In 1994 at Budapest the US, UK, and Russia promised to support Ukraine’s security if it joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and returned its Soviet-era nuclear weapons to post-Soviet Russia. Kyiv did so but when Putin seized Crimea in 2014, the Western response was minimal. When Trump made what he called a “perfect” phone call to President Volodymyr Zelensky in 2018, he tried to barter more US aid for dirt on the Bidens father and son (an operation that triggered Trump’s impeachment). After Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, US assistance increased, though Europe over the next three years gave more. Trump in 2025 slowed the flow and demanded mining rights in exchange for more weapons. Kyiv accepted the terms, but US weapons deliveries stopped unless Europeans paid for them. In 2025 Trump confused everybody by contemplating Tomahawk missiles for Kyiv and then reneging.

In November 2025 the country that promised always to stand by Ukraine demanded it surrender all of Donbas to Russia—even the sliver of highly fortified land that, like Sudetenland, was well defended, and trim its armed forces to about 600,000 men. The plan calls for Ukraine to guarantee the rights of Ukrainian and Russian media and education, ensuring protection for both languages. Kyiv must also pledge never to join NATO or permit Western troops on its soil.

The settlement envisions a halt to NATO expansion, ending an open door to the alliance as well as Russia’s acceptance into the G8 club of wealthy democracies from which it was expelled after annexing the Crimean Peninsula. The agreement would require $100 billion in frozen Russian assets be spent on U.S.-led reconstruction in Ukraine, with half the profits going to America. A hundred or two or three billions would be a pittance against the one to two trillion dollars that outsiders calculate are needed as reparations A separate fund would be reserved for U.S.-Russian joint ventures.

Instead of collapsing from exhaustion and being tried for war crimes, Putin and his entourage will be revived and rewarded. The proposal would require amnesties for crimes committed during the war. Ukraine has opened thousands of war crime investigations, including over well-documented mass killings and torture in occupied areas.

Americans should hide their heads in shame for having elected such an ignorant and soulless regime—the Trump presidency and his Republican Congress. Americans can only hope that Ukrainians, backed by Europeans, will resist and reject the Draconian peace being imposed by the two erstwhile superpowers.

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