Washington’s plan is a strategic pause that will allow Russia to rearm and prepare while Ukraine burns itself out

By Gustavo de Arístegui, as published in LA RAZÓN

November 30, 2025

The diplomatic initiative presented by the U.S. Administration to stop the war in Ukraine should not be confused with a simple cease-fire protocol; we are facing a tectonic reconfiguration of the European security architecture.

The Genesis of the Surrender: the “Kellogg Doctrine” and the Russian connection

The plan did not arise from a vacuum, but from the so-called “Kellogg Doctrine,” formulated by retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg and Fred Fleitz. Its premise is surgical cynicism: war is a toxic asset on the United States’ balance sheet, a grinding conflict with no vital national interest that justifies its continuation.

The strategy applied is coercive and dual. Kyiv is presented with an existential ultimatum: military aid will continue only if it agrees to negotiate its own territorial mutilation. Moscow is offered the carrot of de facto recognition and the stick of massive Ukrainian rearmament should it reject dialogue. Yet the real diplomatic alchemy happened in the shadows.

Confirmation that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy, worked hand-in-hand with Kirill Dmitriev explains why the original draft was actually a wishlist of Kremlin demands poorly translated into English.

This joint authorship has yielded clauses that are true “poison pills” for Ukrainian sovereignty. Although the revised 18-point version eliminated the harshest demands—like the unilateral withdrawal of Ukraine’s still-defended “fortress cities” or Russia’s return to the G8—the core of the agreement remains intact: freezing the conflict along the current lines and forcing Ukrainian neutrality.

The Red Lines: total amnesty and limited sovereignty

Perhaps the most corrosive aspect of the plan from a moral and legal perspective is the insistence on “total amnesty” for actions during the war. In the antiseptic language of diplomacy, this means impunity. For Ukrainian civil society, for survivors of Bucha and Mariupol, and for defenders of international law, this is an aberration.

The idea that war crimes are merely another tool of foreign policy, pardonable if the price is right, is abhorrent from every point of view.

Simultaneously, the demand that Ukraine renounce its Atlantic aspirations in exchange for bilateral security guarantees evokes the ghosts of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Neutrality without autonomous and robust deterrence—as Israel or South Korea possess—dooms Ukraine to become a buffer state, a perpetually gray zone vulnerable to Moscow’s political coercion.

Forced “Finlandization” in the 21st century does not bring security; it brings submission and will, without doubt, be the foundation of another, more devastating conflict.

The Reconstruction Business: aid or plunder?

Where the plan abandons any pretense of altruism is in its economic dimension. The proposal to use €140 billion of frozen Russian assets for reconstruction comes with an unprecedented clause: the United States would reserve 50% of the profits generated by this fund.

We are facing the privatization of postwar recovery. This approach turns international aid into a private equity operation with predatory return rates. The reconstruction of Ukraine’s power grid, schools, and hospitals would be subordinated to generating dividends for both public and private sponsors of the initiative.

Critics are right to call this neocolonialism; it’s a model that threatens to trap Ukraine in chronic poverty, prioritizing external profit over the country’s economic and social viability. It also creates unavoidable friction with the European Union, which holds most of these assets and resists violating its own legal principles to finance a scheme that disproportionately benefits Washington.

The Internal Front: risk of implosion in Kyiv

Accepting this plan places President Volodymyr Zelensky in extreme danger. His mandate has been built on the promise of total victory and territorial integrity. Signing an agreement that cedes 20% of the country and pardons war criminals would be seen by vast sectors of society—and crucially by the military—as an act of high treason.

The risk of a fracture in the chain of command is real and palpable. Elite unit commanders, such as those of the Azov Brigade, have already described territorial concessions and troop reductions as “a humiliating and unacceptable surrender.” History teaches us that armies who feel betrayed by their political leaders at the negotiating table are perfect breeding grounds for insubordination or coup attempts.

At the same time, the plan opens the door to the political reactivation of pro-Russian factions. Figures like Yuriy Boyko and the circle around Viktor Medvedchuk, dormant during the war, are re-emerging. They use war weariness and the rhetoric of “pragmatic peace” to present alternatives to a nationalism that, they argue, has led the country to ruin.

The convergence of a militarized, radicalized nationalism that feels betrayed by the West, and a fifth column reinvigorated and financed by the Kremlin, could drag Ukraine into a civil cold war, completing Putin’s strategic objective of dismantling the Ukrainian state from within.

The Belt of Instability: Georgia and Moldova

The consequences of this capitulation will not stop at the Dnipro. In the post-Soviet space, weakness comes at a high price. An agreement that validates Russia’s territorial gains will send a devastating message to Georgia and Moldova.

In Tbilisi, the ruling Georgian Dream party already uses Ukraine as a propaganda tool of fear: “peace with Russia or total destruction.” International validation of Russia’s strategy would solidify Georgia’s authoritarian turn, allowing Moscow to consolidate a de facto puppet government that eliminates any Euro-Atlantic aspirations.

Moldova, for its part, would find itself geopolitically orphaned. Without the Ukrainian shield and with the latent threat of Transnistria, the pro-European government in Chișinău would face unbearably intense pressure. Russia’s “grey zone” strategy—hybrid destabilization, elite corruption, and military threat—would be legitimized as an effective tool tolerated by the West.

The Global Dimension: the precedent for China and Taiwan

Finally, we must look toward the Indo-Pacific. In Beijing, Chinese Communist Party strategists are taking detailed notes. The Ukraine war has been observed as a laboratory for a possible operation against Taiwan. If the international community accepts a “land for peace” deal in Europe, it creates a disastrous legal and political precedent.

For China, this would validate the thesis that despite its rhetoric, the West is risk-averse and will ultimately accept faits accomplis if the war drags on long enough. This would reinforce the narrative that democracies lack “strategic resilience,” potentially altering Xi Jinping’s risk calculation and incentivizing a more aggressive posture toward Taiwan, under the assumption that a quick operation followed by negotiation from strength is viable.

For Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, the lesson would be equally stark: U.S. security guarantees are conditional and ultimately transactional.

Conclusion: The cost of a false peace

The U.S. “Peace Plan” of November 2025 is not a diplomatic triumph; it is the codification of Western fatigue. By prioritizing a quick exit and short-term economic benefits, Washington is making the classic mistake of confusing the absence of combat with peace.

What is being proposed is a strategic pause that will allow Russia to rearm, digest its conquests, and prepare for the next assault, while Ukraine burns itself out in internal recriminations and poverty. It is a return to 19th-century spheres of influence politics dressed up in 21st-century corporate language.

Alternatives exist. They involve aligning the proposal with the European framework of “peace with justice,” rejecting amnesty, using Russian assets as reparations rather than speculative investment, and offering robust security guarantees that truly deter aggression. But this requires political will, which today seems absent in Washington.

If this plan is implemented as it stands, history will not remember its authors as peacemakers, but as architects of a more cynical, more unstable international order that is paradoxically more prone to war. Realpolitik, when divorced from values, stops being realistic and simply becomes complicity. And in the steppes of Ukraine, that complicity will once again be paid for with the freedom of a nation.