The Trump Administration’s Proposed Russo-Ukrainian Settlement: Territorial Architecture, Strategic Vulnerabilities, and Impediments to Durable Conflict Resolution
Executive Overview
A twenty-eight-point peace framework, allegedly negotiated between United States Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian Federation representative Kirill Dmitriev during October 2025 bilateral consultations, has emerged as the most consequential diplomatic initiative regarding the Russia-Ukraine conflict since the February 2022 full-scale invasion.
Widely circulated through Ukrainian parliamentary channels but remaining officially unconfirmed by governmental authorities, this framework represents the Trump administration’s principal attempt at facilitating a cessation of hostilities through bilateral engagement with Moscow, explicitly bracketing substantive Ukrainian or European input from formative negotiations.
The proposal’s territorial provisions, military architecture, and security guarantees merit rigorous scholarly examination regarding their capacity to establish durable, sustainable peace versus their susceptibility to perpetuating frozen conflict dynamics reminiscent of Russia’s established patterns in Moldova, Georgia, and South Ossetia.
Territorial Dimensions and Geostrategic Implications
The framework’s territorial provisions constitute its most strategically consequential—and controversial—component.
The proposal mandates de facto Russian Federation sovereignty over Crimea, Donetsk Oblast, and Luhansk Oblast, with United States recognition of these territorial acquisitions despite their characterization under contemporary international law as illegal annexations contravening the Stimson Doctrine of 1932 and multiple United Nations General Assembly resolutions affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its 1991 borders.
Most significantly, the framework requires Ukrainian withdrawal from approximately fourteen to fifteen percent of Donetsk Oblast currently under Kyiv’s administrative control, encompassing strategically vital defensive positions including Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, and Kostyantynivka.
This “fortress belt,” extending approximately fifty kilometers through western Donetsk and encompassing eleven years of systematic fortification involving extensive trench networks, anti-tank obstacles, and artillery coordination infrastructure, represents Ukraine’s primary defensive bastion against Russian encroachment.
The Institute for the Study of War emphasizes that surrender of these positions would fundamentally compromise Ukrainian defensive capabilities along topographically disadvantageous terrain, as the Donetsk region’s elevational characteristics provide pronounced advantages to defenders while simultaneously facilitating integrated artillery operations.
The proposed arrangement designates withdrawn Ukrainian-held territories as internationally recognized Russian Federation territory maintained as demilitarized pending ultimate implementation—an architectural framework replicating Russia’s established frozen conflict templates in Transnistria (Moldova), South Ossetia (Georgia), and Abkhazia (Georgia).
Such arrangements have historically enabled Moscow to perpetuate leverage over neighboring states while precluding Western integration and final settlement resolution.
Military Architecture and Asymmetric Security Constraints
The framework establishes profoundly asymmetric military limitations disproportionately constraining Ukrainian capacity whilst leaving Russian military modernization and expansion substantially unconstrained.
Ukrainian armed forces would undergo reduction from approximately 880,000 personnel to 600,000—representing a thirty-two percent diminution—concurrent with Russian military capabilities remaining essentially undiminished.
This force rebalancing would fundamentally alter regional security dynamics in Moscow’s strategic favor.
Additionally, the proposal mandates Ukrainian abandonment of unspecified “key categories of weaponry,” apparently encompassing long-range missile systems capable of conducting deep strikes into Russian Federation territory.
Such provisions would eliminate Ukraine’s capacity for strategic deterrence against Russian superiority in conventional forces and artillery.
The NATO provisions constitute a comprehensive capitulation to Russia’s December 2021 ultimatum demanding NATO rollback to 1997 borders.
Ukraine must constitutionally enshrine permanent neutrality and NATO non-membership whilst NATO simultaneously commits to categorical eastward expansion cessation and Ukraine’s perpetual exclusion from membership frameworks.
Prohibition against NATO force deployment within Ukrainian territory undermines Kyiv’s aspirations for European peacekeeping mechanisms and effectively forecloses Ukraine’s historical integration trajectory toward Western institutional structures.
The proffered security guarantee—characterized as “Article 5-like” protection—represents a significant but ultimately problematic innovation.
The formulation pledges that any “significant, deliberate, and sustained armed assault” by Russia constitutes an attack “jeopardizing peace and security of the transatlantic community,” ostensibly triggering consultations and potential military responses from United States and European partners.
However, this construction deliberately circumvents binding Article 5 commitments, instead stipulating that signatories undertake action “as they deem necessary”—language historically demonstrating limited deterrent efficacy.
Critical security studies scholarship identifies fundamental architectural deficiencies. Unlike genuine Article 5 arrangements, which benefit from NATO’s integrated command infrastructure and forward-deployed deterrent capabilities, the proposed guarantee lacks enforcement mechanisms, established command relationships, or pre-positioned military assets.
The guarantee’s ten-year duration with renewal contingent upon mutual consent introduces temporal uncertainty absent from permanent alliance commitments.
Furthermore, the guarantee purportedly does not extend to circumstances wherein Ukraine initiates military operations against Russia, thereby creating asymmetric obligation structures potentially incentivizing Russian provocations below “significance” thresholds.
The Budapest Memorandum of 1994 provides sobering historical precedent.
Ukraine relinquished the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from the Russian Federation, United States, and United Kingdom—assurances Moscow subsequently violated through the 2014 Crimean annexation and 2022 full-scale invasion.
The current proposal’s non-binding security architecture risks replicating this pattern, substituting substantive institutional guarantees with declaratory commitments demonstrably lacking credible enforcement mechanisms.
International Legal and Constitutional Impediments
Multiple layers of international legal and Ukrainian constitutional frameworks present formidable obstacles to proposed territorial arrangements.
Ukraine’s 2019 Constitution declares its territory “within present borders… indivisible and inviolable” (Article 2) whilst prohibiting constitutional amendments “oriented toward liquidation of independence or violation of territorial indivisibility” (Article 157).
The Constitutional Court of Ukraine has consistently held that territorial cessions through local referenda mechanisms constitute unconstitutional actions.
Any peace settlement necessitating territorial concessions would therefore confront insurmountable constitutional barriers absent revolutionary constitutional revision through supermajority parliamentary procedures.
International legal doctrine provides unambiguous support for Ukrainian territorial integrity. United Nations General Assembly Resolutions 68/262 (2014), ES-11/1 (2022), and ES-11/4 (2022) reaffirm Ukrainian sovereignty within its 1991 borders and declare Russian annexations illegal under established international law.
The principle of uti possidetis juris—preserving post-colonial borders—combined with the United Nations Charter’s Article 2(4) prohibition on territorial conquest constitute definitive legal foundations for Ukraine’s right to territorial reintegration.
The proposed arrangement would constitute what international relations scholars term a “victor’s peace” rather than negotiated settlement based upon mutual compromise.
Russia’s territorial acquisitions achieved through illegal armed force receive de facto international recognition whilst Ukraine surrenders strategic defensive positions, accepts force limitations, and abandons collective security integration—all without commensurate Russian concessions beyond non-aggression pledges Moscow has repeatedly violated with impunity.
European Strategic Autonomy and Transatlantic Implications
European leadership has articulated substantial alarm regarding exclusion from negotiations affecting continental security architecture.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot emphasized that “peace cannot constitute capitulation,” whilst Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski insisted Ukraine should retain unrestricted self-defense capabilities.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas declared: “For any plan to achieve success, support from both Ukrainians and Europeans remains essential.”
This diplomatic rupture has catalyzed European strategic autonomy discussions.
European nations have intensified Ukraine support whilst preparing utilization of €280 billion in frozen Russian assets for Ukraine’s defense industrial base.
However, Europe confronts structural limitations: NATO demonstrates insufficient capacity to prepare requisite 300,000-troop eastern flank response forces, undermining European capacity to furnish Ukraine meaningful security guarantees independent from transatlantic frameworks.
Scholarly Assessment and Theoretical Framework
International relations scholarship characterizes this framework through the analytical lens of hegemonic stability theory and security dilemma dynamics.
Putin’s July 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” articulates ideological positions asserting that “Russians and Ukrainians constitute one people”—a foundational premise fundamentally incompatible with genuine acceptance of Ukrainian sovereignty.
The Atlantic Council’s Mykola Bielieskov and Council on Foreign Relations analysts persuasively argue that Putin’s war objectives transcend territorial acquisition, extending toward elimination of Ukraine as an independent, Western-oriented democracy—ambitions no territorial demarcation can accommodate.
Implementation challenges compound these theoretical considerations. Comparative frozen conflict analysis drawn from Russia’s historical record in Transnistria, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia demonstrates Moscow’s systematic exploitation of suspended conflicts to maintain perpetual leverage over neighboring states whilst preventing Western integration.
Without robust international monitoring mechanisms featuring enforcement authority—which Putin has explicitly rejected—demilitarized zones risk becoming staging areas for renewed aggression following Russian military reconstitution.
Peacekeeping and conflict resolution scholarship emphasizes that effective ceasefire verification requires neutral third-party surveillance maintaining 24/7 coverage across approximately 2,000 kilometers of demarcation lines.
The proposed framework lacks specificity regarding monitoring mechanisms, force composition, or enforcement authority. European proposals for 5,000-troop “reassurance forces” prove manifestly inadequate for surveillance of this magnitude.
Putin has moreover rejected foreign military presence, categorically declaring “I perceive no utility in their presence on Ukrainian territory” contingent upon peace agreement realization.
Conclusion
The Trump administration’s proposed Russo-Ukrainian settlement framework represents a geopolitically consequential but analytically problematic attempt at conflict resolution through territorial compromise predicated upon realist assumptions fundamentally misaligned with contemporary conflict dynamics.
The proposal rests upon unstated assumptions that territorial concessions can resolve what is substantially a contest regarding Ukraine’s existential right to sovereign statehood and Western institutional integration.
Putin’s maximalist objectives—eliminating Ukrainian sovereignty as an independent, Western-oriented democratic entity and reasserting Russian hegemonic authority within its historical sphere of influence—remain fundamentally irreconcilable with any settlement preserving genuine Ukrainian independence and democratic self-determination.
The proposed security architecture, whilst nominally innovative, replicates Budapest Memorandum deficiencies that preceded Moscow’s violation of established commitments in 2014 and 2022.
Implementation prospects confront formidable institutional, constitutional, and geopolitical impediments: Ukrainian constitutional prohibitions against territorial alienation absent supermajority amendment procedures, absence of credible security guarantees featuring enforcement mechanisms and command authority, European resistance to exclusion from continental security architecture deliberations, and Russia’s documented historical propensity for violating international agreements when strategically expedient.
The framework’s success necessarily presupposes Putin accepting strategic defeat regarding his core objective of subjugating Ukraine—an assumption manifestly unsupported by contemporary rhetoric, demonstrated military commitment, or established patterns of Russian state behavior.
From the perspective of critical security studies and international relations theory, this framework constitutes less a pathway toward durable, sustainable peace than a formalized frozen conflict architecture that would reward territorial conquest through military force, substantially attenuate collective security norms undergirding the post-Cold War international order, and leave Ukraine permanently vulnerable to renewed Russian aggression following military reconstitution cycles.
Whether substantially revised negotiations can address these fundamental structural deficiencies whilst remaining acceptable to all negotiating parties—particularly in light of Ukrainian constitutional constraints and European security concerns—represents the central analytical challenge confronting contemporary diplomatic efforts as the conflict enters its fourth consecutive year of devastating military operations.
