The Flaw in the Trump new Christmas Peace Plan: Trusting Russia Not to Cheat

Executive Summary

Hope on the Horizon? Why This Moment Could Be Different

The United States has advanced a proposal for establishing a free economic zone in Ukraine’s contested Donbas region, wherein Ukrainian forces would withdraw from designated territories while Russian military advances are theoretically prohibited.

President Volodymyr Zelensky disclosed this initiative on December 11, 2025, expressing profound misgivings regarding governance mechanisms and Russian infiltration risks.

The proposal emerges as Ukraine submits a revised 20-point peace framework to Washington, with the Trump administration demanding clarification by Christmas.

Zelensky’s Impossible Choice: Peace Without Surrender?

Two following fundamental obstacles persist

(1) Determining the disposition of Donetsk territory

(2) Resolving control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

Zelensky maintains that any territorial adjustments require validation through Ukrainian elections or referenda, reflecting constitutional constraints and democratic legitimacy concerns.

Introduction

Inside the Negotiation Breakdown: Where Trump’s Plan Stumbles

Peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, mediated by the Trump administration, have reached a critical juncture marked by American proposals substantially favorable to Moscow.

Why Experts Doubt Trump’s Free Economic Zone Will Ever WorK

The emergence of the free economic zone concept exemplifies the administration’s pragmatic approach to breaking an intractable deadlock, yet simultaneously exposes fundamental incompatibilities between Washington’s strategic interests in ending the conflict expeditiously and Kyiv’s determination to preserve sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Against a backdrop of Russian military advantages in Donbas—where Moscow controls approximately 85 percent of the region despite having captured it through military invasion rather than negotiated settlement—the Trump proposal represents a significant recalibration of diplomatic expectations.

Zelensky’s articulation of concerns regarding the free economic zone reflects Ukraine’s historical experience with Russian treachery, particularly the systematic exploitation of demilitarization agreements signed following the 2014 incursion.

The proposal’s architecture attempts to reconcile divergent interests through economic incentives, yet Zelensky’s skepticism underscores the insurmountable challenge of verifying compliance when Russian forces maintain proximate positions and possess demonstrated capabilities for infiltration under civilian guises.

Key Developments

The New Yalta? Trump Reshapes Post-War Europe Without Asking Ukraine

The Trump administration’s diplomatic offensive accelerated dramatically in early December as special envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Jared Kushner engaged in intensive negotiations with both Ukrainian and Russian representatives.

Witkoff’s December 2 meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow preceded subsequent trilateral discussions in Paris scheduled for the weekend of December 13-15, indicating the administration’s conviction that a negotiated framework remained achievable before the holiday recess.

The Kremlin’s stated receptivity to the revised proposal, contingent upon preservation of Russian territorial gains in Donbas, contrasts markedly with Zelensky’s insistence upon maintaining Ukraine’s current defensive positions without further withdrawal.

Ukraine’s submission of a refined 20-point framework, evolved from an initial 28-point proposal widely criticized as excessively favorable to Russian interests, demonstrates Kyiv’s engagement in the negotiation process despite significant reservations.

The reduction from 28 to 20 points reportedly reflected American and European refinements rather than substantive Ukrainian-initiated modifications to territorial arrangements, suggesting that Washington absorbed certain objections without fundamentally altering the framework’s core concessions to Russia.

Security Breakthrough: Trump Offers Ukraine the Guarantee It Needs?

The Trump administration simultaneously leveraged security guarantees modeled upon NATO’s Article 5 as countervailing inducements for territorial concessions.

These guarantees commit the United States and European allies to treating Russian aggression against Ukraine as an attack upon the transatlantic community, theoretically deterring future conflicts.

However, experts have noted that the Article 5-style arrangement lacks enforceable mechanisms equivalent to NATO’s collective defense obligations, particularly given the proposal’s simultaneous prohibition against stationing NATO forces within Ukrainian territory.

Facts and Concerns

From War to Commerce: Can Economic Incentives Heal Ukraine’s Wounds?

The proposed free economic zone designation masks asymmetrical demilitarization arrangements that Zelensky identified as fundamentally unbalanced.

While Ukrainian forces would withdraw from designated Donbas areas, Russian forces would merely refrain from advancing—a distinction that Zelensky rightly characterized as providing inadequate symmetry.

His interrogation of governance mechanisms proved particularly prescient: absent transparent international oversight and verification protocols, the zone would remain vulnerable to Russian military or paramilitary infiltration disguised as civilian economic activity.

Historical precedent furnishes compelling evidence of Russian capacity for such deception, exemplified through the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic, nominally independent entities functioning as Russian proxy regimes.

Russian Greed - Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant constitutes an equally intractable problem, symbolizing the convergence of military, political, and technological dimensions of the conflict.

Currently under Russian occupation since March 2022, the facility represents Europe’s largest nuclear installation and generates immense strategic value through both its electrical generation capacity and its psychological significance.

The IAEA, which maintains inspector presence at the facility, has advocated for a “special status” arrangement involving cooperative agreements between Russia and Ukraine, yet such arrangements presume good-faith cooperation between belligerents engaged in existential struggle.

Previous iterations of the Trump proposal envisioned equal 50-50 electricity distribution and IAEA supervision, but these mechanisms remained contingent upon Russian agreement to operations modalities that Russia has consistently rejected.

Zelensky’s constitutional and political constraints warrant emphasis in understanding his diplomatic inflexibility on territorial questions.

Any cession of Ukrainian territory constitutes a violation of Ukraine’s constitutional provisions, while domestic political dynamics render such concessions catastrophically unpopular among the electorate.

The president’s insistence upon referenda or electoral validation thus reflects not merely negotiating posture but genuine constitutional impediments to unilateral executive surrender of territory.

The Russian Refusal: Why Putin Still Demands More Than Trump Offers

Russia’s strategic calculus remains fundamentally unchanged

(1) Moscow demands complete control over Donbas

(2) Sanctions relief

(3) Reintegration into the G8

(4) Recognition of territorial gains formalized through the peace arrangement.

The Kremlin’s stated conditional acceptance of the revised American proposal masks its actual insistence upon concessions exceeding what even the Trump administration’s heavily pro-Russian draft would provide.

Intelligence assessments indicate that Kremlin officials and Russian military bloggers have systematically rejected the proposals as insufficiently favorable, employing calculated ambiguity regarding Putin’s position to pressure Washington toward additional concessions while obscuring Russia’s obstructionist role.

Future Steps Towards Full Peace Deal

A Nation Watches: How Ukrainians Will Decide Their Country’s Future

Achieving a durable peace arrangement necessitates resolving several interlocking problems simultaneously.

(1) First, the demilitarization concept requires transformation from rhetorical commitment into verifiable mechanism, potentially through establishment of an international monitoring commission composed of neutral parties with enforcement authority.

The European Union, rather than the United States, should likely lead such verification efforts given the proposed arrangement’s European territorial dimensions and the American diplomatic need to maintain distance from implementation failures.

(2) Second, the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant’s governance structure demands negotiated agreement distinguishing between operational authority and security oversight, potentially through IAEA-administered international consortium management rather than joint Russian-Ukrainian control, which remains politically untenable.

(3) Third, security guarantees require transformation from Article 5-style rhetoric into concrete commitments specifying American military intervention thresholds, troop positioning protocols, and intelligence-sharing arrangements.

The prohibition against NATO force deployment within Ukraine simultaneously with Article 5-style guarantees creates logical inconsistencies requiring resolution through supplementary bilateral arrangements between Washington and Kyiv.

(4) Fourth, Zelensky’s referendum requirement implies an extended timeline for domestic legitimation processes, potentially requiring preliminary framework agreements allowing public deliberation and parliamentary ratification before implementation.

The Trump administration’s Christmas deadline thus appears operationally unrealistic unless interpreted as preliminary understanding rather than comprehensive settlement.

(5) Fifth, Russia’s demonstrated capacity for bad-faith compliance requires establishing automatic sanctions snapback mechanisms triggered upon detected ceasefire violations.

Putin’s Prize: How Russia Could Win Diplomatically What It Lost Militarily

The administration’s proposal to unfreeze approximately 100 billion dollars in Russian assets for reconstruction purposes should remain contingent upon verified compliance extending across sufficient temporal horizons to establish credible behavioral change.

Finally, NATO’s role in post-settlement European security architecture requires clarification absent from current proposals—whether Ukraine receives membership guarantees, expedited accession timelines, or permanent Article 5-style arrangements without membership status itself remains contested among American, European, and Ukrainian negotiating positions.

Conclusion

Hope on the Horizon? Why This Moment Could Be Different

The American free economic zone proposal represents pragmatic compromise seeking to transform intractable territorial disputes into prosperity-oriented frameworks emphasizing economic development rather than military conquest.

Yet Zelensky’s articulated concerns—regarding governance mechanisms, Russian infiltration capabilities, asymmetrical demilitarization, and democratic legitimacy requirements—identify genuine deficiencies in the proposal’s architecture rather than negotiating obstruction.

The convergence of three separate peace junctures (demilitarization, nuclear plant governance, and security guarantees) within a single negotiation creates multiplicative complexity that Christmas deadlines render operationally unfeasible.

Durable Ukrainian-Russian peace requires transcending current proposals toward arrangements institutionalizing sustained verification, establishing enforceable compliance mechanisms, and preserving Ukrainian democratic processes through popular legitimation.

The Trump administration’s aggressive timeline, while politically advantageous domestically, risks producing arrangements insufficiently robust to withstand inevitable implementation challenges inherent to post-conflict state reconstruction and security transition.