Episodes

  • Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine now outlasts the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany

    Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine now outlasts the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany
    Jan 15 2026
    Russia’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine passed a significant milestone on January 13. It has now outlasted the 1,418 days it took Vladimir Putin’s notorious predecessor, the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, to bring his war against Nazi Germany to a successful conclusion.The two wars are hard to compare in any reasonable way. But there are nonetheless some important parallels worth pointing out. The most wishful parallel is that aggression never pays.After some initial setbacks, Stalin’s Soviet Union turned things around on the battlefield and drove the German aggressors and their allies out of the country. This was possible because of the heroism of many ordinary Soviet citizens and because of the massive support the US gave to the Soviet war effort.Ukrainian heroism is unquestionably key to understanding why Russia has not prevailed in its aggression against Ukraine. Support from western allies is, of course, also part of this explanation. But the inconsistent, often hesitant and at times lacklustre nature of this support also explains why Kyiv is increasingly on the back foot.It would be easy to put most of the blame for recent Ukrainian setbacks on the US president, Donald Trump, and his approach to ending the war. Back in the second world war, there were several German attempts to cut a deal with the western allies in order to be able to focus the entire war effort against the Soviet Union. Such efforts were consistently rebuffed and the anti-Nazi coalition remained intact until Germany’s surrender.Now, by contrast, a deal is more likely than not to be made between Trump and Putin. Emboldening rather than weakening Russia, such a deal would come at the steep price of Ukrainian territorial concessions and the continuing threat of further Russian adventurism in Europe.But it is also important to remember that Trump has only been back in the White House for a year, and that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started almost four years ago. During the first three of these years, the western coalition supporting Ukraine firmly stood its ground against any concessions to Russia in the same way as the allies of the second world war rejected a deal with Germany.What they did not do, however, is offer the unconditional and unlimited support that would have put Ukraine in a position to defeat the aggressor. Endless debates over what weapons systems should be delivered, in which quantities, how fast and with what conditions attached have rightly frustrated Ukrainians and their war effort. This may have become worse under Trump, but it did not start with him.Nor can all the blame for the dire situation in which Ukraine now finds itself be attributed only to the imperfections of the support it received. Lest we forget, Russia committed the unprovoked crime of aggression against its neighbour and is violating key norms of international humanitarian law on a daily basis with its relentless campaign against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.Yet several major corruption scandals in Ukraine, including one that left key energy installations insufficiently protected against Russian air raids, have hampered Kyiv’s overall war effort as well. They have undermined the country’s resilience, weakened public and military morale and have made it easier for Ukraine’s detractors in the west to question whether defending the country is worth taxpayers’ money.The parallel to the second world war is again interesting here. There is now much hand wringing in the west over corruption in Ukraine – a problem as old as the country has been independent – and the democratic legitimacy of its president, government and parliament.Volodymyr Zelensky, the democratically elected, and still widely supported, leader of a country defending itself against an existential threat, has to justify constantly why he will not violate his country’s constitution and sign over territory to its aggressive neighbour.Back in the 1940s, western allies had few qualms to back Stalin in the fight against Hitler. They supported Stalin despite him being a murderous dictator who had used starvation as a tactic to commit acts of genocide against Ukrainian farmers, killed almost the entire officer corps of the Polish army in a series of mass executions and was about to carry out brutal mass deportations of tens of millions of people.The choices the western allies made in the 1940s when they threw their support behind Stalin may have been morally questionable. But they were driven by a keen sense of priorities and a singular focus on defeating what was at the time the gravest threat.That too is missing today, especially in Trump’s White House. Not only does Trump seem to find it hard to make up his mind whether it is Putin or Zelensky who is to blame for the war and the lack of a peace deal, he also lacks the sense of urgency to give this war his undivided attention.Worse than that, some of the distractions Trump ...
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    7 mins
  • Trump's Venezuela raid foreshadows more turbulence in a new 'great power' carve-up of the world

    Trump's Venezuela raid foreshadows more turbulence in a new 'great power' carve-up of the world
    Jan 5 2026
    The US military operation in Venezuela in the early hours of January 3, rang the new year in with a bang — even by the current standards of American foreign policy. After months of military build-up and planning, US president Donald Trump gave the go-ahead for the apprehension of the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.Operation Absolute Resolve — the codename for this successful effort to capture and abduct a sitting head of state — has no recent precedent other than the US under President George H. W. Bush snatching Panama’s strongman Manuel Noriega some 36 years ago. This latest blatant and unashamed violation of international law confirms even for the last doubter that Trump cares little about rules and norms. As such, it also signals the continuing erosion of what is left of the rules-based international order.For all of the US president’s triumphalism at his post-operation press conference, he cannot be certain that the undoubted tactical success of capturing Maduro will equate to an enduring success of moulding the western hemisphere in his own image. As his predecessors have found in Afghanistan and Iraq, regime change is a fraught and costly business. It is also one that is deeply unpopular among Trump’s Maga base.The temptation for the White House, therefore, is to declare victory after the weekend’s operation against Maduro and quickly move on to other targets while the world is still stunned by the audacity of kidnapping a sitting foreign leader.But any expectations that other countries in the western hemisphere will fall like the proverbial dominoes that Trump’s neo-con predecessors envisioned in the Middle East after the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 are deeply misplaced. And yet the people and leaders of Cuba (long an obsession for Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio), Colombia (the largest supplier of cocaine to the US) and Mexico (the key route through which fentanyl gets into the US) will be deeply worried about their future prospects in a Trumpian world after they got name-checked at Trump’s press conference.The same goes for Greenlanders. Trump has, since his first term in office, repeatedly claimed that the US needs Greenland, which is legally part of EU and Nato member Denmark. And he did so again in the aftermath of the operation against Venezuela, stating over the weekend that the US “need[s] Greenland from the standpoint of national security”. Equally unsettling was the ominous tweet by Maga influencer Katie Miller — the wife of Trump’s influential deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller — showing a map of Greenland in the colours of the US flag, with the caption “SOON”.Much to the dismay of Greenlanders, the US president certainly won’t be discouraged by the meek response from many European officials to the intervention in Venezuela. This, too, is deeply disconcerting, signalling that many of the erstwhile most ardent defenders of international law have given up pretending it matters any more. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, was first out of the block, with a post that started by pointing out Maduro’s lack of legitimacy as president and ended with an expression of concern for European citizens in Venezuela. She just about managed to squeeze in that “the principles of international law and the UN charter must be respected”. But this sounded like — and almost certainly was — an afterthought. A subsequent joint statement by the EU26 (that is, all member states except Hungary) was similarly equivocal and did not explicitly condemn Washington’s breach of international law. The British prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, focused his statement on the fact that “the UK has long supported a transition of power in Venezuela”, that he “regarded Maduro as an illegitimate President” and would “shed no tears about the end of his regime”. Before closing with his desire for a “safe and peaceful transition to a legitimate government that reflects the will of the Venezuelan people”, the former human rights lawyer briefly reiterated his “support for international law”.The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, however, wins the prize for prevarication. Not only did he make almost identical comments about Maduro’s lack of legitimacy and the importance of a transition in Venezuela, he also noted that a legal assessment of the US operation is complicated and that Germany will “take its time” to do so.While there was a mixture of enthusiasm and worry across Latin America, the strongest condemnations came from Moscow and Beijing.Russian President Vladimir Putin had signalled his support for Maduro early on in the escalating crisis at the beginning of December. A statement by the Russian foreign ministry initially merely offered support for efforts to resolve the crisis “through dialogue”. In subsequent press releases, Russia took a stronger line, demanding that Washington “release the legitimately ...
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    11 mins
  • The US attack on Venezuela erodes further what is left of the old world order

    The US attack on Venezuela erodes further what is left of the old world order
    Jan 4 2026
    United States President Donald Trump has never been particularly discreet about wanting regime change in Venezuela. After months of sabre-rattling, the direct “large scale strike” on the South American country came in the early hours of January 3 — and involved a special forces operation apprehending Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.This demonstration of unconstrained force is the first time that the US has effectively kidnapped a head of state since 1989 when some 20,000 US soldiers descended on Panama and took its de facto leader, General Manuel Noriega, to the US to face charges of drug trafficking.But the US operation is more than simply a shocking violation of international law. It is yet another major departure from Trump’s re-election platform of limiting US overseas entanglements. For, at his subsequent press conference, the president announced that the US “are going to run the country” until a proper transition can take place. He stopped short of committing troops to an actual occupation force, but neither did he explicitly rule out any American boots on Venezuelan ground.The Trump administration is without doubt the key player deciding whether the situation in Venezuela now escalates further or not. But much will also depend on how Venezuelans will react. Maduro was not vastly popular, to say the least, but he and his inner circle exercised full control over the armed forces and security apparatus. His government, for now, remains in power but the capture of Mr Maduro could set off infighting among the remaining elite and trigger a new wave of mass protests against the regime.In the immediate aftermath of the operation, Venezuela’s defence minister said that the country will resist the presence of foreign troops and that all of the country’s armed forces will be deployed. Whether these forces will ultimately put up a fight during a second wave of US strikes, which Mr Trump threatened during his press conference, however, is not clear. Nor is it obvious how pro- and anti-Maduro forces will position themselves in the coming days, or what exact plans the White House has in place to deal with widespread unrest in Venezuela should that happen.Venezuela is at a critical juncture now, but the repercussions of this US operation will be felt well beyond the country. Mr Trump said the US and the western hemisphere are a much safer place to be after the US operation. But no matter the lengths to which he and his supporters go in justifying their action, this operation will further erode what is left of a rules-based international order.The US operation confirmed the trend to a return to thinking of the world as spheres of influence — as articulated in the Monroe doctrine some two-hundred years ago and in the new national security strategy of the US, released just a few weeks back. The “president of peace”, as Trump likes to portray himself, and his war secretary, Pete Hegseth, were unequivocal that this operation was a clear indication of Washington’s determination to re-assert absolute dominance in the western hemisphere — in word and deed.Unsurprisingly, several countries in the Western Hemisphere, which the US sees as the core of its sphere of influence, denounced the US operation, as did Russia and China.Russian President Vladimir Putin had signalled his support for Maduro early on in the escalating crisis at the beginning of December. A statement by the Russian foreign ministry initially merely offered support for efforts to resolve the crisis “through dialogue”. In subsequent press releases, Russia took a stronger line, condemning the US operation as “unacceptable violation of the sovereignty of an independent state” and then demanding that Washington “release the legitimately elected president of a sovereign country and his spouse.”China similarly condemned the US operation as a “clear violation of international law, basic norms in international relations, and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter” and urged Washington to “ensure the personal safety of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, release them at once, stop toppling the government of Venezuela, and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiation.”But it is unlikely that the US will face any immediate major repercussions beyond some handwringing about the need to respect international law, including from other democratic countries. The US operation to capture Maduro sets a dangerous precedent, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it. That it will likely further encourage other states with similar pretensions to their own spheres of influence goes almost without saying.The US president has made no secret about his desire to take over the Panama Canal and Greenland for national security reasons, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long taken a hard line on Cuba’s government. If the operation in Venezuela indicates how the White House envisages the implementation of...
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    6 mins
  • The fall of Siversk caps a difficult year for Ukraine

    The fall of Siversk caps a difficult year for Ukraine
    Dec 26 2025
    Over the last few days, Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from the town of Siversk in the Donetsk region. This brings Russian troops to within 30km of Sloviansk which is the most important hub in the northern part of the so-called fortress belt of cities in Ukraine’s east. This latest withdrawal caps a year of important territorial losses for Kyiv. With assistance from North Korean troops, Russia has pushed Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region. Moscow also seized some territory in the northern Ukrainian region of Sumy, where fighting flared up again recently. In the east, and after a long and costly campaign, it captured Pokrovsk, another key fortress that Ukraine held onto until December. All of these losses were painful for Ukraine, but they have not led to an actual collapse of the frontlines. Russia either did not have the forces to capitalise on its advances or has been, as is currently the case around Pokrovsk, prevented from doing so by Ukrainian resistance. Individually Ukrainian losses were not strategic victories for Russia, and even collectively they do not mark a decisive turn in fortunes for either side. Moreover, the actual territory gained is relatively small, and overall, the frontline, which still stretches to over 1,000 kilometres in length has not shifted much. But wherever it has shifted, it has — with only few exceptions such as in Kupyansk recently — done so mostly to Russia’s advantage. All of this has come at huge cost in men and materiel, more so to Russia, but also to Ukraine.On the diplomatic front, the year has been more mixed. Donald Trump’s return to the White House has certainly improved the outlook for Russia, but again not in a game-changing way. After multiple proposals, deadlines, acrimonious and disastrous presidential meetings, and a lot of shuttle diplomacy, a clear pathway towards a ceasefire, let alone a lasting peace agreement, is yet to emerge.Another round of talks in Florida between US and Ukrainian and European negotiators, seems to have resulted in a broad agreement on security guarantees, post-war rehabilitation, and a general framework for ending the war. This new 20-point plan a much-improved version of an earlier 28-point plan floated by the White House and based on significant Russian input. It also comes after Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, accepted that Ukraine could give up on its NATO membership ambitions as part of a peace deal.The main sticking point in the current set of proposals remains the question of territory. Here, too, there appears to be some movement towards a possible compromise in the form of a demilitarized zone in those areas of the Donbas that Russia claims but does not yet control. A smaller free economic zone around the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhya nuclear power station has also been suggested as a way forward on this particular issue. Zelensky now appears keen to resolve the remaining issues directly with Trump.Getting Trump to back a Ukrainian-accepted set of proposals would strengthen the Ukrainian position overall. But as the past 11 months of Trump 2.0 have clearly indicated, this is not merely about the substance of a deal but also, and often more importantly, about the process. Washington at times appears more interested in resetting relations with Russia than in peace for Ukraine. In his dealings with both Zelensky and Putin, the US president has left little doubt that any peace deal will also be a business deal and be negotiated, for the most part, not by seasoned diplomats but by friends and family aligned to Trump’s personal interests and his America-first agenda. This highly disruptive approach to peace making has inserted a new dynamism into the peace process but produced few tangible or desirable results.Trump’s diplomacy on Ukraine, as well as more generally, has alienated core transatlantic allies and has time and again enabled consequence-free Russian push-back. There are no signs that this pattern will end in the near future.Nor will Russia stop playing for time. After the current proposals were shared with Russia, the Kremlin responded saying that while they will be studied carefully and a position be prepared on this basis, while the Russian foreign ministry noted “slow but steady progress”.Given that Zelensky, domestically weakened by yet another corruption scandal, has already made a number of important concessions, such as on NATO membership and on a demilitarized zone, the question is how much more Ukraine can possibly give or be expected to give. Kyiv’s recent concessions should partly be seen as an effort to keep the US, and President Trump personally, engaged in the process. It also reflects Kyiv’s precarious overall position. Ukraine has achieved some reprieve after the EU managed to agree on a €90 billion loan last week and Kyiv negotiated a deal to restructure around €2 billion in growth-linked debt. But in the absence of stronger US sanctions and a ...
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    8 mins
  • A fudge on Ukraine and a delay on Mercosur: how the EU procrastinates and fails to prove Trump wrong

    A fudge on Ukraine and a delay on Mercosur: how the EU procrastinates and fails to prove Trump wrong
    Dec 20 2025
    By agreeing to provide a loan of €90 billion for the years 2026-2027 “based on EU borrowing on the capital markets backed by the EU budget headroom”, EU leaders have set the direction for the future of support for Ukraine. At stake at yesterday’s meeting of the European Council was Kyiv’s ability to continue to defend itself against Russia’s ongoing aggression — as well as the credibility of the EU as a player in the future of European security.The key decision for the EU’s leaders was whether, and how, they would continue to support Ukraine financially over the next two years. Europeans have provided a vital drip-feed of ongoing financial assistance to Kyiv throughout almost four years of war. But they have also struggled to fill, in its entirety, the hole created by the withdrawal of US support since the return of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025.The estimated €136 billion budget support needed by Ukraine in 2026 and 2027 is a relatively fixed figure regardless of whether any peace initiative comes to fruition. A large part of it — €52 billion in 2026 and €33 billion in 2027 — is for military support. The EU-agreed loan of €90 billion thus covers at least the essential military needs of Ukraine. It will either contribute to the ongoing war effort or help create a sufficiently large and credible defence force to deter any future aggression by Russia. Brussels is now the most important financial partner for Ukraine by any measure.To fund support for Ukraine in the future, the commission developed two proposals. The most widely supported — but ultimately rejected — proposal was to use the frozen Russian assets held by the Belgium-based Euroclear exchange as collateral for a loan to Ukraine.In view of Belgian opposition — because of insufficient protections against likely Russian retaliation — the European Commission had also proposed joint EU borrowing to fund support for Kyiv. Despite resistance from a group of EU member states, this was the only agreeable solution at the end.The agreement on a loan to Ukraine funded from EU borrowing achieves the primary goal of securing at least a modicum of budgetary stability for Kyiv. But it came at the price of EU unity. An “opt-out clause” had to be provided for Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia. All three countries are governed by deeply Euro-sceptical and Russia-leaning parties. The deep irony is that by opposing EU support for Ukraine, they expose Ukrainians to a fate similar to that they suffered when the Soviet Union suppressed pro-democracy uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and then Czechoslovakia in 1968.The EU until now managed to maintain a relatively united front on sanctions against Russia, on political, economic and military support for Ukraine, and on strengthening its own defence posture and defence-industrial base.Over the past year, these efforts have accelerated in response to Trump’s return to the White House. Since then, Trump has shifted the US position to one which is in equal measure more America-first and more pro-Russia than under any previous US administration. And the pressure on Kyiv and Brussels has increased significantly over the past few weeks. First there was the 28-point peace plan, which may have been a US-led proposal, but read as if it was Kremlin-approved. Then the new US national security strategy, which gave significantly more space to criticisms of Europe than to condemnation of Russia for the war in Ukraine. And in an interview with Politico, Trump called European leaders weak and alleged that “they don’t know what to do.”No longer casting Russia as a threat to international security and considering Europe’s liberalism as dangerous and contrary to American interests shows how detached the US has become from reality and the transatlantic alliance. At the same time, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, keeps insisting that he will achieve his war aims of fully annexing another four Ukrainian regions — in addition to Crimea — by force or diplomacy. Giving his usually optimistic outlook on Russia’s military and economic strength, Putin reiterated these points at his annual press conference on December 19.In light of how squeezed Brussels and Kyiv thus now are between Washington and Moscow, the agreement on EU financing for Ukraine, despite its flaws and the acrimony it has caused within the EU, is a significant milestone in terms of the EU gaining more control over its future security. But it is not a magic wand resolving Europe’s broader problems of finding its place and defining its role in a new international order.Neither is EU dithering on other issues. The agreement reached at the summit between the EU’s leaders on how to financially support Ukraine was overshadowed by their failure to overcome disagreement on signing a trade agreement with the South American trade group, Mercosur. A decision on this trade deal with Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, ...
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    7 mins
  • New US national security strategy adds to Ukraine’s woes and exacerbates Europe’s dilemmas

    New US national security strategy adds to Ukraine’s woes and exacerbates Europe’s dilemmas
    Dec 11 2025
    Ukraine is under unprecedented pressure, not only on the battlefield but also on the domestic and diplomatic fronts.Each of these challenges on their own would be difficult to handle for any government. But together — and given there is no obvious solution to any of the problems the country is facing — they create a near-perfect storm.It’s a storm that threatens to bring down the Ukrainian government and potentially the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. This would deal a severe blow to Kyiv and its western allies.On the frontlines in eastern Donbas, Ukraine has continued to lose territory since Russia’s summer offensive began in May 2025. The ground lost has been small in terms of area but significant in terms of the human and material cost.Between them, Russia and Ukraine have suffered around 2 million casualties over the course of the war.Perhaps more importantly, the people of Ukraine have endured months and months during which the best news has been that its troops were still holding out despite seemingly unending Russian assaults. This relentless negativity has undermined morale among troops and civilians alike.As a consequence, recruitment of new soldiers cannot keep pace with losses incurred on the frontlines – both in terms of casualties and desertions.Moreover, potential conscripts to the Ukrainian army increasingly resort to violence to avoid being drafted into the military. A new recruitment drive, announced by the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrsky, will increase the potential for further unrest.Russia’s air campaign against Ukraine’s critical infrastructure continues unabated, further damaging what is left of the vital energy grid and leaving millions of families facing lengthy daily blackouts.The country’s air defence systems are increasingly overwhelmed by nightly Russian attacks, which are penetrating hitherto safe areas such as the capital and key population centres in the south and west. It’s a grim outlook for Ukraine’s civilian population who are now heading into the war’s fourth winter. A ceasefire, let alone a viable peace agreement, remains a very distant prospect.The political turmoil that has engulfed Zelensky and his government adds to the sense of a potentially catastrophic downward spiral. There have been corruption scandals before, but none has come as close to the president himself.The amounts allegedly involved in the latest bribery scandal – around US$100m (£75 million) – are eye-watering at a time of national emergency. But it is also the callousness of Ukraine’s elites apparently enriching themselves that adds insult to injury.The latest scandal has also opened a potential Pandora’s box of vicious recriminations. As more and more members of Zelensky’s inner circle are engulfed in corruption allegations, more details of how different parts of his administration benefited from various schemes or simply turned a blind eye are likely to emerge.This has damaged Zelensky’s own standing with his citizens and allies. What has helped him survive are both his track record as a war leader so far and the lack of alternatives.Without a clear pathway towards a smooth transition to a new leadership in Ukraine, the mutual dependency between Zelensky and his European allies has grown.The US under Donald Trump is no longer, and perhaps never has been, a dependable ally for Ukraine. What is worse, however, is that America has also ceased to be a dependable ally for Europe.America’s new national security strategy, published on December 4, has exploded into this already precarious situation and has sent shockwaves across the whole of Europe. It casts the European Union as more of a threat to US interests than Russia.It also threatens open interference in the domestic affairs of its erstwhile European allies. And crucially for Kyiv, it outlines a trajectory towards American disengagement from European security.This adds to Ukraine’s problems — not only because Washington cannot be seen as an honest broker in negotiations with Moscow. It also decreases the value of any western security guarantees. In the absence of a US backstop, the primarily European coalition of the willing lacks the capacity, for now, to establish credible deterrence against future Russian adventurism.Efforts by the coalition of the willing cannot hide the fact that a fractured European Union whose key member states, like France and Germany, have fragile governments that are challenged by openly pro-Trump and pro-Putin populists, is unlikely to step quickly into the assurance gap left by the US. The twin challenge of investing in their own defensive capabilities while keeping Ukraine in the fight against Russia to buy the essential time needed to do so creates a profound dilemma.Without the US, Ukraine’s allies simply do not have the resources to enable Ukraine to even improve its negotiation position, let alone to win this war. In a worst-case scenario, all...
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    7 mins
  • Navigating the Vortex | Ethnopolitics Edition | Episode 1

    Navigating the Vortex | Ethnopolitics Edition | Episode 1
    Nov 27 2025

    On 14 November 2025, we spoke to George Kyris about his article on the recognition of Palestine.

    George is an Associate Professor in International Politics at the University of Birmingham and the co-founder and chair of the ECPR Research Network on Statehood, Sovereignty and Conflict. You can find out more about him here.

    You can access the article we discuss in this episode here for free.

    The special issue on The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Reflections on the Politics of Stalemate, co-edited by Karl Cordell, Brendan O’Leary and Stefan Wolff (Ethnopolitics 15(4), 2016), is available here.



    Get full access to Navigating the Vortex at www.navigatingthevortex.com/subscribe
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    21 mins
  • Trump’s 28-point plan was the result of a well-timed Russian move.

    Trump’s 28-point plan was the result of a well-timed Russian move.
    Nov 26 2025
    Land for peace, take it or leave it. A deal proposed by the United States to end Russia’s war in Ukraine — negotiated in secret with Moscow — initially appeared to be an ultimatum to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy until his US counterpart Donald Trump said on Saturday (November 22) that it was not his “final offer”. Three days later, he reiterated that his original deadline was off.Kyiv and its allies rejected the draft as too favourable to Moscow and discussions on an “updated and refined peace framework” with Ukraine are ongoing. But it is the timing of the leaked 28-point plan that makes it interesting.Before details of this plan emerged, it seemed that Mr Trump was finally acting on his threat to sanction Russia for its invasion and force it to negotiate peace in good faith.Russia has offered no meaningful concessions on the maximalist demands it has stuck to since at least late 2022. There were no tangible outcomes after the Alaska summit between Mr Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in August. A follow-up summit was cancelled.Seemingly frustrated and targeting a crucial economic lifeline, Mr Trump ordered sanctions on two of Russia‘s oil majors — Rosneft and Lukoil — which took effect on November 21, albeit with a significant number waivers in place for one of the sanctioned companies, Lukoil. He threatened secondary sanctions on their foreign customers, especially in India, China, and Europe.And more importantly, he apparently gave the green light for US lawmakers to pursue legislation, first introduced in April, that would give him further powers to impose such primary and secondary sanctions.This is classic Russian timing. Just as the US president signals another hardening of his approach, the Russian side indicates a new-found flexibility regarding a deal on Ukraine. That was the case in April and May this year and again in July and August. Each time it appeared that Mr Trump was falling out with Mr Putin, and each time the Russian president managed to lure him back into the charade of Russian engagement — with a phone call in May and then with their summit in Alaska in August.Such moves to appear actively committed to peace negotiations have saved Mr Putin several times from more serious US measures in support of Ukraine.The timing was also advantageous for Russia because Mr Zelenskyy is under serious pressure from a new corruption scandal involving several people from his inner circle. Developments on the frontlines in the east and south of Ukraine, where Russia continues to make steady gains, also endanger Mr Zelenskyy‘s grip on power, making him potentially more likely to accept Russian demands.It is, therefore, not surprising that the original 28-point plan, despite at least some US co-authorship, had significant Russian input. The origins of this particular plan appear to be in an October meeting between US special envoy Steve Wittkoff, Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Mr Putin’s close ally Kirill Dmitriev, who is the head of one of Russia‘s sovereign wealth funds. The plan was drafted outside the US’ so-called inter-agency process – which would have ensured close coordination, among others, between the state department, the defence department, and the national security council.Mr Dmitriev, by contrast, is unlikely to have acted outside the closely monitored power structures under Mr Putin‘s control. The Russian president‘s assertion that this was “essentially an updated plan“ of what had already been discussed in Alaska, that Russia simply “received … through the existing communication channels with the US administration” is hardly the full story.The source of the original leak story in Axios was an unnamed official on the American side. The plan’s murky origins and the flawed process through which the initial 28-point version of the plan emerged explain its messy contents which would have been a bad deal for Ukraine.Under the terms of what was first leaked, Ukraine would not just cede territory but lose more than what Russia currently — and illegally — occupies. The plan specifically required Ukrainian forces to withdraw from parts of Donetsk it controls, which is something that would be politically very hard for Mr Zelenskyy to accept. According to the original plan, Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk would be wholly considered Russian territory, while Kherson and Zaporizhzhia would be frozen along the line of contact.Kyiv was also supposed to surrender sovereignty over key foreign policy decisions, such as its choice to pursue NATO membership, in exchange for weak security guarantees and vague promises for reconstruction. In the typical deal-making approach to foreign policy favoured by Mr Trump, the United States was to be compensated for providing any security guarantees and to profit handsomely from reconstruction projects in Ukraine once the war ended.Unsurprisingly, Mr Zelenskyy was not overly enthusiastic ...
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    9 mins