We can only hope that this is Ukraine’s darkest hour
Donald Trump has a plan that Vladimir Putin likes
It very much looks yet again like Donald Trump’s plan for Russia’s war on Ukraine is for Ukraine to capitulate. According to a Cable News Network newsletter, “Trump seems to be trying again to bully Ukraine into accepting Russia’s punitive terms to end the war. The new US plan for ‘peace’ seems to be nothing more than the Kremlin’s wish list and is the latest example of Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff buying President Vladimir Putin’s concocted history lessons.”[1]
According to a Kyiv Independent newsletter, “Kyiv would be forced to cede Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, be obliged to recognize Russian as an official language, and remove restrictions on the Russian Orthodox Church, an organization closely linked to the Russian state and supportive of the war against Ukraine.”[2]
The latter newsletter mostly blames Steve Witkoff for reviving Putin’s maximalist demands yet again, saying, “The people involved — [Russia’s top economic negotiator, Kirill] Dmitriev and Witkoff — are both evil and clueless. They believe that the current situation is the best opportunity to once again attempt to force Ukraine to capitulate.” And despite White House claims, it appears neither Ukraine nor Europe have been consulted on this latest reiteration of an old, rejected idea that Volodymyr Zelensky is now even less able or willing to accept.[3]
Zelensky, who for the entire war I have thought to be the determined leader Ukraine needed, is now weakened, facing a ballooning corruption scandal involving his associates and a Russian infiltration into Pokrovsk, “a pivotal logistics hub early in the all-out war and a vital defense outpost later on . . . now on the verge of being lost.”[4]
Trump, an authoritarian himself, for whom law is whatever he says it is at whatever his whim is at the moment; who claims sovereignty in a way proposed in The Dawn of Everything, and is thus beyond moral or legal challenge;[5] and for whom anyone who doubts this is a traitor, for he is the state, is plainly most comfortable in the company of other authoritarians, like Putin, and is much too desperate for Putin’s respect and approval.
Zelensky may be unable to accept Trump’s terms but I fear that this will only mean that Trump cuts off arms to Ukraine yet again. We have feared that something like this might happen since Trump was re-elected. The CNN newsletter described Trump’s plan as “especially pernicious this time since the US is turning up the heat on Kyiv at a vulnerable moment.”[6] How about we just call it “especially pernicious.”
[1] Stephen Collinson to Meanwhile in America list, “Turbulent days ahead,” Cable News Network, November 21, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/newsletters
[2] Oleksiy Sorokin to WTF is wrong with Russia? List, Kyiv Independent, November 20, 2025, https://kyivindependent.com/newsletters/
[3] Oleksiy Sorokin to WTF is wrong with Russia? List, Kyiv Independent, November 20, 2025, https://kyivindependent.com/newsletters/
[4] Oleksiy Sorokin to WTF is wrong with Russia? List, Kyiv Independent, November 20, 2025, https://kyivindependent.com/newsletters/
[5] David Graeber and David Wengrow, Dawn of Everything (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021).
[6] Stephen Collinson to Meanwhile in America list, “Turbulent days ahead,” Cable News Network, November 21, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/newsletters