BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  DEC 5, 2025 

“Any appeasement of Russia as the aggressor, any attempts to putting pressure on Ukraine as the victim of this aggression, is morally repressible and an outrage against human decency. To bow before Russia is to abandon shared values and plunge the free world in anarchy and chaos. Strong American leadership is the only hope.”
–Open Letter to President Donald Trump from 47 European leaders

The letter from European leaders was in response to President Trump’s Ukraine peace plan made public November 20. He told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he had until Thanksgiving to accept it. “This is my final offer,” Trump reportedly warned Zelensky.

Trump called the war a “loser” for everyone. He told reporters that if Zelensky didn’t agree to the plan by Thanksgiving he could “continue to fight his little heart out,” only without American aid.

The 28-point Trump plan and Trump’s incessant ultimatums blew up like a tin can sent flying by cherry bombs on the Fourth of July.

And for good reason. The peace plan was no such thing. It was a declaration of surrender written in the Kremlin, for the Kremlin, by the Kremlin and, yes, one US special envoy.

Columnist George Will wrote: “it reads like a wish-list letter from Vladimir Putin to Santa Claus.”

The plan was the brainchild of “Kremlin confidant Kirill Dmitriev and US Special Envoy Steve Witcoff,” according to the Wall Street Journal. The Ukrainians were not consulted, nor were the Europeans, and apparently neither were key foreign policy advisors in the Trump White House and State Department. Trump himself, according to reports, was not involved other than to greenlight the talks.

Soon after, a new set of chief negotiators showed up in Switzerland, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Army Secretary Dan Driscoll; Andry Yermak, Zelensky’s now former chief of staff; Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law; US Air Force General and NATO Commander Alexus Grynkewich; and Witcoff.

Less than a week later, they came up with a new plan, this one with just 19 points but no less onerous for Ukraine. Russia panned it.

The Europeans have a lot at stake. European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen said flatly that any acceptable agreement must be based on the principle that borders can’t be changed by force and that Ukraine is a sovereign nation, just two of the key points that Moscow replied with a firm NYET.

Just this week, Witkoff and Kushner met with Putin in Moscow for further talks described as “useful.” Putin was not as positive. There are other talks now taking place in Florida.

In my mind, there is no more tragic failure of American foreign policy than what has occurred in Ukraine. It has been the bane and embarrassment of four Administrations: Obama, Biden, and two for Trump. It has many of the trademarks of US failures abroad: indecision, capitulation, nationalist impulses, misguided politics absent any moral grounding or sense of global responsibilities, and brazen profiteering that often compromises an honest and enduring resolution of conflict.

And so it goes, as does the bloodshed and human suffering.

These tedious now-you-see-it-now you don’t—pretenses of peace don’t take place under a cessation of hostilities. Death and destruction rain down on the Ukrainian frontlines, on towns and villages where women and children have become targets of the drones, missiles, artillery shelling, and saboteurs. Schools, playgrounds, hospitals, and high-rise residences are not spared. People die. People suffer injury, homelessness, health, food, and energy shortages.

Drone sightings and sabotage of supply lines are now affecting Ukraine’s neighbors, and threatening the security of Europe, hence the letter from the European members of parliaments.

Alas, the peace talks have dashed hopes as fast as they are raised.

The war has gone on for 12 years, since the invasion and occupation of Crimea in southeastern Ukraine on the Black Sea in 2014. The Russian incursions and aggression have not ceased since. To suggest the war is in its fourth year is preposterous.

Putin has been relentless in his ambition to restore the Russian empire. He apparently admires Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Josef Stalin, and so many other empire builders, dictators, and demagogues who have littered history with the skeletal remains of innocent populations.

Eastern Ukraine, to paraphrase British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, is not the end, or the beginning of the end. It is the end of the beginning for Putin. His intent is to restore Russia’s iron grip on Eastern Europe and Eurasia. He has never recognized Ukrainian sovereignty. He says the Ukrainian people and the Russian people are one, brought together by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik revolution in 1917, that toppled the centuries-old Romanov dynasty and installed what my late friend Bill Gavin often referred to as the Marxist-Leninist dictatorship. Putin called the dissolution of the Soviet empire after the cold war a global catastrophe.

So, this modern-day David vs Goliath battle for Ukrainian sovereignty is a de facto defense of Eastern Europe.

This is not a war, like others the US has entangled itself in at the expense of US domestic concerns, as Trump and Vice President JD Vance would have you believe. This war has consequences for us as much as for our European allies. Putin’s ambitions if allowed to proceed could swallow up Poland, the Caucuses, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the stans—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Putin already dominates Belarus and claims regions of Georgia and Moldova as Russian wards.

Critics complain that Trump behaves like a Putin collaborator. He has jerked around the Ukrainian people time after time. He seems to have little interest in them or the fate of their nation. Today, our long-standing allies are a convenience, not an obligation.

His real interest seems to be transactional and opportunistic. Trump seems willing to sacrifice Ukraine for a binding relationship with Putin. The dynamic duo has found ways to monetize the conflict. Trump won profitable concessions on Ukrainian’s precious minerals last May. His 28-point plan called for the unfreezing of Russian assets under a deal whereby the US would receive half of all profits realized from $100 billion of those assets invested in Ukraine. The Europeans would be required to invest another $100 billion in the venture. “The remainder of the unfrozen Russian assets will be invested in a US Russian investment vehicle that will implement joint projects in specific areas…” the plan read.

The plan also referenced a broad range of other potential moneymakers, including a “long-term economic cooperation agreement (with Putin) for mutual development in the areas of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth metal extraction in the Arctic and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities.” Witkoff talked extensively with Dmitriev about joint economic ventures between the two nations.

The bottom line is that, as the Europeans wrote in their letter, US leadership “is the only hope.” But hope is not transactional. It is not expediency. It is light and not darkness. Its currency is not monetary. It’s the moral values and ethics principles that have guided American behavior and define American character. As the Wall Street Journal concluded in an editorial, “Maybe it’s time to conclude that Mr. Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants Ukraine,” and we add, a whole lot more.

The American people should tell Putin NYET, not today, not tomorrow, not ever.