The Ukrainian Peace Talks and the Banana Republics as Protagonist of the New World Order

Pope Francis’ funeral may become a turning point in the Russian - Ukrainian war peace talks, especially after Trump – Zelemsky meetings in Rome. Any peace on humanitarian grounds, of course, is better than a war, but geopolitics is not always an explicit humanitarian discipline. The margin between geopolitics on one hand and humanism on the other in the particular case is well seen within the analysis of the sustainability related to the identified peace terms and conditions.

Reuters has published two sets of proposals to end the war in Ukraine - a US proposal and a counter-proposal from Ukrainian and European officials.

The US package was presented to European officials by US envoy Steve Witkoff at a meeting in Paris on April 17. The full text of the proposals was published by the agency without any changes. It reads:

Framework for an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, overview:

These terms represent the final offer from the United States to both sides.

Ceasefire

• Permanent ceasefire

• Both sides immediately begin negotiations on technical implementation

Security guarantee in Ukraine

• Ukraine receives a solid security guarantee

• Guarantor states will be an ad hoc group of European countries and willing non-European countries

• Ukraine will not seek NATO membership

• Ukraine may seek EU membership

Territory

• US recognizes de jure Russian control of Crimea

• US recognizes de facto Russian control of Luhansk Oblast

• US recognizes de facto Russian control of Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Kherson Oblasts

• Ukraine regains territory in Kharkiv Oblast

• Ukraine regains control of Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant under US control and management, with electricity shared between both sides, as well as the Kakhovka Dam

• Ukraine gains unimpeded passage on the Dnieper River and control of the Kinburn Spit

Economy

• United States and Ukraine to conclude an agreement on economic cooperation in the field of rare earth metals

• Ukraine will be fully restored and financially compensated

• Sanctions against Russia imposed as a result of this conflict since 2014 will be lifted

• The US and Russia will conclude economic cooperation in the field of energy and other industrial sectors.

Reuters also published a set of proposals for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, which were presented to the US side on Wednesday (04/23/2025) by Ukrainian and European officials at talks in London.

Framework for an agreement between Russia and Ukraine:

Ceasefire:

• Commitment to a complete and unconditional ceasefire in the air, on land and at sea.

• The two sides immediately begin negotiations on technical implementation with the participation of the US and European countries. This is happening in parallel with the preparation of the agenda and conditions for a full peace agreement.

• Monitoring of the ceasefire, led by the US and supported by third countries. • Russia must unconditionally return all deported and illegally displaced Ukrainian children. Exchange of all prisoners of war (the principle of “all for all”). Russia must release all civilian prisoners.

Security guarantees for Ukraine:

• Ukraine receives robust security guarantees, including from the US (an Article 5-like agreement), although there is no consensus among the Allies on NATO membership.

• No restrictions on Ukrainian armed forces.

• The guarantor states will be an ad hoc group of European and non-European countries. No restrictions on the presence, weapons, and operations of friendly foreign forces on Ukrainian territory.

• Ukraine pursues accession to the EU.

Territory:

• Territorial issues will be discussed and resolved after a complete and unconditional ceasefire.

• Territorial negotiations begin on the basis of the Line of Control.

• Ukraine regains control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant with US participation, as well as the Kakhovka Dam.

• Ukraine enjoys unimpeded passage on the Dnieper River and control of the Kinburn Spit.

Economy:

• The US and Ukraine implement an economic cooperation/minerals agreement.

• Ukraine will be fully rehabilitated and financially compensated, including through Russian sovereign assets that will remain frozen until Russia compensates for the damage caused to Ukraine.

• US sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014 may be subject to gradual easing after a sustainable peace is achieved and are subject to reinstatement in the event of a breach of the peace agreement (retrogression).

The two proposals possess a lot of similarities. The principal differences between them go only to the security guarantees for Ukraine and the initial point for the territorial negotiations. Both, of course, are essential items, but after Europe again expects a US key contribution in what it deems important to fix on paper, and this contribution is far from naturally available in the situation, it makes the drafts practically identical. However, the thing that can be expected to become a cross point of the texts is that Ukraine would be denied a NATO membership, while it would receive some vague guarantees for its national security from the collective West, but the guarantees would lack a collective consolidation basis and a proper military capacity. The latter comes mainly from the US stance. So, Ukraine could then rely on some guarantees potentially as effective as the ones from the Budapest Agreement of 1994 or, at best, on having on its territory some French, British and German peace troops, plus eventually some neutral (i.e., no NATO-related) ones. The second option is not too bad, but it bears the disadvantage that the peace troops, entirely or partially, can be withdrawn at any time, depending on what the governments in the respective countries may decide. After nobody can be certain what governments will come into power in the years to come in these countries (e.g., right nationalists), obviously, this option is also quite unsustainable from a Ukrainian perspective.

Beyond staging a collective guarantee, the West seems prepared to sacrifice Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russians. More or less, it is a capitulation of Ukraine on purely military terms. No capitulation could be considered sustainable, especially if one day Ukraine will not be in a dire need of the West or more realistically, Putin would know that the West is militarily impotent, regardless of its economic superiority over Russia. Trump’s pacifism in the situation, of course, is nothing but a clear recognition of the same impotence. The peace efforts or the peace deal, according to the terminology of Trump, declare to China and Russia that the West is not ready to fight them. Not now, and absolutely unclear when it may become ready, if at all. That is why a peace agreement may make the rest of Ukraine a territorial buffer between NATO and Russia, and it is going to be the cheapest solution to the conflict for the West right now, with a pro-Western government in Kiev. This solution pushes away any options for arming Ukraine to the point of recovering its control over the lost territories for the foreseeable future. Trump naturally expects another bonus from the peace – his buddies will get an almost colonial control over the Ukrainian economy by the rare minerals agreement and they will not put obstacles before the country to move towards its EU membership, because the companies they would register in Ukraine will be eligible to receive EU subsidies both in the pre-accession phase as well as when Kiev would become an EU member country. So, the buddies will get something more than the Ukrainian national resources – i.e., some money from the European taxpayers. All that is possible due to the EU's passivity on the military and economic fronts. And this passivity will continue to be stable after the EU is a multinational union with a weak EC and multifarious egoistic interests inside the union. The EU’s weakness is so hilarious that it has to treat the international law with the immobilised Russian Central Bank assets in such a perverse way that these assets are sovereign even when their Sovereign is to blame for military crimes and war aggression in another country. Then in the same context, the two peace proposals what envisage as ‘Ukraine will be fully rehabilitated and financially compensated, including through Russian sovereign assets that will remain frozen until Russia compensates for the damage caused to Ukraine’, is just wishful thinking, deprived of any enforcing mechanisms. Further, it should be reminded that the size of Russian assets is about twice smaller than the estimated compensations and this fact alone makes feasible the assumption that the assets sale would be much more useful funding source as a military priority now than as a future economic recovery one, if Ukraine should build its own large scale defence industry instead of waiting to the West to guarantee one day in an abstract fashion its national security at the cost of a colonial dependence. If the EU were not a geopolitical buffoon, they should also be motivated to support building strong Ukrainian defence sector after even in its rearming programme the Union has not defined a chance to equip a powerful joint army, while the Ukrainian army may become this kind of army. The latter could be ensured well if the Ukrainian key defence industry units would located in Europe under special legal provisions aimed at providing multinational benefits.

The ultimate conclusion from the peace talks related to Ukraine is that the country will gain little both in military and economic terms from what is worked out for them, and its main role is scheduled to become a geopolitical buffer between the West and Russia, ruled under strong American control. Geopolitically, it means that the world dividing into spheres of influence between the U.S., China and Russia is under way, the West is not prepared to fight directly the big authoritarian regimes and the national sovereignty of the smaller countries and the international law are to be used as auxiliary functions in the spheres outlining from now on. The EU will be a junior understudy of the U.S. in this multipolar world. In the described reality where sustainable peace is nothing more than a truce, the next vulnerable points for the West are the Baltic republics, Romania (or Bulgaria) and Taiwan. It is interesting that in Romania and Bulgaria, Putin can perhaps reach dominance without needing a war, but simply by trying to increase the influence of his internal political proxies. If successful, it would enable him to construct an axis of influence from the Black Sea to Central Europe behind the Ukrainian buffer (from Romania or Bulgaria through Serbia to Slovakia and Hungary). A gas pipeline building in the case (Turkey and all the mentioned countries, but Romania are keen on it) would help make use of this approach significantly, too. A similar perspective promises a long period of flowering corruption in the pointed out countries where the geopolitical interests of Europe and Russia will encounter, and in the new world order, based on spheres of geopolitical influences, their role would be that of banana republics. Like Ukraine.