Why is Trump pushing Ukraine so hard to accept a peace deal with Russia?

US President Donald Trump’s 28-point peace plan to end the Ukraine war has put pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept the proposal to reach a deal with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. 

While much of the world wants to see an end to the Ukraine war, many are also questioning Trump’s prodding of Zelenskyy to accept his plan, which demands major concessions from Kiev, including territorial losses and the acceptance of political neutrality. 

Trump’s Ukraine proposal – like his 21-point Gaza peace plan, which has envisioned a Board of Peace under the US leadership to oversee and enforce the ceasefire – offers to form a Peace Council led by the American president, according to the 27th article of the plan. 

Europeans responded to Trump’s plan with a separate 28-point plan, and most recently, Americans and Ukrainians are also working on another 19-point charter, but the US president’s original plan continues to be the major influencer of current negotiations. 

Experts argue that at the current stage of the Ukraine war, where battlefield trajectories do not favour Kiev, Trump and his allies are concerned that Zelenskyy’s leadership, shaken by a recent corruption scandal implicating the president himself, can collapse or spark an internal fighting between the army and political elites. 

According to Oleg Ignatov, a senior analyst on Russia at the International Crisis Group, Trump’s growing push to get Ukraine to reach a peace deal with Russia has two main motivations.  

First of all, Trump wants to conclude a peace deal to show the world that he is sincere in his role as a peacemaker, he says. 

But his second motivation, which is to protect Ukraine from “a military defeat and an agreement on even worse terms” with Russia, is now becoming Trump's main objective, Ignatov tells TRT World. 

“He does not want Ukraine to become his Afghanistan, as it was with Biden,” Ignatov says, referring to the hasty US pull-out from the Asian nation that led to the collapse of the Washington-backed Afghan government and swift takeover by the Taliban.

“Plus, Trump believes that great powers should be able to negotiate and make deals, because wars between them can bring nothing good,” Ignatov says in relation to Trump’s increasing pressure on Zelenskyy.

Trump’s 28-point plan envisions long-term Russian-American cooperation in many areas – from energy, natural resources, to infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centres, rare earth minerals projects in the Arctic and “other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities” – signalling his intention to form a big-power consensus on a global scale. 

It was in this big-power context that Trump recently urged ally Japan to dial down the rhetoric on Taiwan in an apparent gesture to pacify Chinese leader Xi Jinping, whom he met in South Korea earlier this month and reached a trade deal framework with Beijing. 

Ukraine in retreat 

According to Ignatov and other war observers, the Ukrainian army is under serious pressure at the front line from the Russian military and continues to gradually retreat, while the country’s mobilisation system appears to be experiencing serious problems. 

“It is not yet clear how Ukraine can fix this, or whether it can at all, which means that it will be very difficult for Ukraine to extract any concessions from Moscow,” says Ignatov. 

Though Ukrainian officials have vowed that Kiev will not buckle under pressure, the war situation presents a different picture. 

Russian analysts and officials believe that any peace deal needs to satisfy Moscow more than Kiev, due to ground realities where Putin’s forces have the upper hand. 

“Russia is in a stronger position, so any plan would have to be pro-Russian because this is more realistic,” said a former Russian official in a recent interview with the Washington Post. 

But that Russian perception also begs a question: Will Russia ever seek a real peace deal with Ukraine as its forces march across battlefields with Ukrainian national morale declining? 

“Moscow may make compromises, but hardly any significant ones, given the current situation on the front lines. Of course, this depends on Russia's interest in peace right now,” says Ignatov. 

What Russia really aims for Ukraine might be understood by Moscow's reaction to a possible Ukrainian approval of Trump's plan, the analyst says. 

“If Ukraine now makes the compromises that Russia wants, and Moscow drags out the negotiations while continuing to strengthen its advantages on the front lines, then it is obvious that Russia thinks it can achieve bigger goals.”

But the analyst also draws attention to how the Kremlin has framed the Ukraine war as an existential fight against not only Kiev, but also the West. This means peace with Ukraine will also amount to a de-escalation with the West, creating an opportunity to develop a European-Russian security framework, he says. 

“Therefore, I do not think that Russia will use peace as a pretext for a new war. For Russia, Ukraine is an instrument for broader agreements. If Russia wins the war in Ukraine but does not come to a de-escalation path with the West, it will be a difficult situation for Russia,” says Ignatov. 

But other pundits like John Mearsheimer, a prominent international politics expert, believe that Putin will not accept some crucial parts of Trump’s peace plan – like the Ukrainian army size, US security guarantees to Kiev and partially demilitarised status of the Donbass region from which Ukraine should be withdrawn. 

In a recent remark, Putin suggested that peace will come “once Ukrainian troops withdraw from the territories they occupy” in an apparent reference to Russian-annexed regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia. “If they don’t withdraw, we will achieve this through military means,” Putin added.

What are Ukraine’s cards?  

During a heated exchange with Zelenskyy at the White House in February, Trump had publicly declared that Ukraine does not have any cards to play against Russia. 

While Zelenskyy and much of the Ukrainian establishment continue to resist Trump’s 28-point plan, Kiev’s options against Moscow, whose economy has largely stayed stable despite heavy Western sanctions due to its fossil-rich status, are not very promising. 

“Even if Russia does not show any signs of seeking consensus, under current conditions, the best realistic scenario for Ukraine is to pursue negotiations,” says Linas Kojala, CEO of the Geopolitics and Security Studies Centre in Vilnius, the capital of Baltic state Lithuania. 

For Ukraine, that would mean a ceasefire or armistice without legal recognition of Russian annexations; sustained Western sanctions on Russia; and long-term security commitments from the US and Europe, including multi-year military assistance and air defence, even if NATO membership is postponed, Kojala tells TRT World. 

But the Kremlin has rejected a ceasefire till now. Also, Trump’s 28-point plan allows Russian de facto control of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, pledges to release sanctions on Russia and bring Moscow back to the “global economy”, including its return to the G7. 

The plan also rejects Ukraine’s membership in NATO. “Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future,” it says. 

While the plan allows Ukraine’s EU integration, it has an ambiguous language on its economic and infrastructural reconstruction, suggesting Russian-American cooperation to rebuild the war-torn country.   

“Accelerated EU integration and financial support would be crucial to keep Ukraine stable and firmly anchored in the West while part of its territory likely remains occupied. Such an outcome would not resolve all disputes, but it would prevent a deeper collapse of Ukraine’s security and economy and keep options open for the future,” Kojala hopes. 

But Alistair Edgar, a political scientist and academic at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, does not see a reliable path for Ukraine if it cedes more territory and reduces its army size in the hope of banking on Russian and US security guarantees. 

“Putin's core demands just strengthen Russia's strategic position (and give Putin temporary cover) for a renewed attempt to attack Ukraine and seek to destroy it entirely as an independent state,” Edgar tells TRT World.