It didn’t take long for the predictable chorus of indignation to make itself heard. Steve Witkoff’s 28-point peace proposal for the Ukrainian War said far more about just how detached Kiev and its diehard supporters in the European establishment are from reality than it did about the plan itself. They didn’t even wait for the ink to dry to denounce the document as a Kremlin trick, a capitulation dressed up in diplomatic prose, or a ploy designed to “sell out” the Ukrainians. Yet, for all the outrage, not many have paused to consider what the plan actually asks of each side – and, more importantly, what it does not ask of Kiev.
When one strips away the performative moral grandstanding, what one encounters is an ironic truth: If the proposal were genuine, and if its broad contours were a practical way forward–which is to say, acceptable to Moscow – then in many respects the plan would be far more favourable to Ukraine than any settlement it is likely to obtain later. Indeed, viewed in the cold light of realpolitik rather than the comforting glow of rhetoric, the proposal seems so lenient to Kiev that it’s all but inconceivable Moscow would accept it – which alone should give pause to those dismissing it out of hand for being too “pro-Russian” or even, as The Guardian has absurdly claimed, as having fundamentally been co-written by the Russians themselves.
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