Trump pushes U.S. peace plan that favors Moscow and offers little to Ukraine, but Zelensky rejects any notion that Russia should be rewarded for its aggression

Ukraine soldier operates a howitzer (European Pressphoto Agency - EPA)

 

It is maddening to live in the United States under a Donald Trump presidency, especially if you were wise enough not to vote for the guy. So imagine what it must be like for a U.S. ally having to deal with an unreliable, chaos-driven White House under the Trump regime. The world got a taste of that yesterday when The New York Times published the following headline: "Trump Pressures Ukraine to Accept a Peace Plan That Sharply Favors Russia." If Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky were the host of Jeopardy!, he probably would store that in the category "With Friends Like This, Who Needs Enemies."

Yesterday proved to be a dark 24 hours in the struggle to find peace in the Ukraine-Russia conflict as Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance took muddy waters and made them muddier. In a jointly published report at The War Zone (TWZ) and Yahoo!News, Howard Altman provides details under the headline "Ukraine Situation Report: U.S. Peace Plan Stumbles After Tumultuous Day":

During a turbulent day in which the Trump administration saw its plans to end the war in Ukraine sputter, Vice President JD Vance said Kyiv would have to give up territory now held by Russia in any such deal. He also said Ukraine would have to accept the annexation of Crimea by Russia and a prohibition on joining the NATO alliance.

“It was the first time a U.S. official had publicly laid out a plan to end the war that favors Russia in such stark terms,” The New York Times reported.

“The current lines, or somewhere close to them, is where you’re ultimately, I think, going to draw the new lines in the conflict,” Vance told reporters in India. “Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own.”

Vance did not specify what territory in Ukraine would be given up by Russia, which currently occupies about 20 percent of it. Under those terms, Ukraine would have to surrender huge swaths of land. Vance also said both sides need to come to the table or the U.S. would “walk away” from further negotiations.

The vice president’s comments came a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pushed back on any plan that would call for him to legally recognize Crimea as territory of Russia, which illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014.

 In fact, Zelensky already has rejected a U.S. plan calling for Ukraine to give up land Russia seized by attacking its neighbor. From a report at Axios:

President Trump declared that Volodymyr Zelensky has "no cards to play" in a stinging rebuke after the Ukrainian president rejected his framework for peace.

The U.S. presented Ukraine with its "final offer" for peace last week, which includes U.S. recognition of Crimea as Russian territory and no possibility of NATO membership for Ukraine. But Zelensky rejected that proposal on Wednesday.

Trump is accusing Zelensky of blocking the peace plan while suggesting an agreement with Russia is "very close."

• White House envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, a U.S. official tells Axios.

"Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea," Zelensky told reporters. "There is nothing to talk about. It is against our constitution."

• Ukraine's constitution also commits the country to working toward NATO membership.
• However, as Trump pointed out in his response, the document does not actually state that Ukraine recognize Russian control of Crimea, only that the U.S. will.

Trump called Zelensky's statement "very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia," in a lengthy Truth Social post, arguing that Ukraine was not actually fighting for Crimea and that it was "lost years ago."

• "It's inflammatory statements like Zelenskyy's that makes it so difficult to settle this War. He has nothing to boast about! The situation for Ukraine is dire — He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country," Trump continued.
• "I have nothing to do with Russia, but have much to do with wanting to save, on average, five thousand Russian and Ukrainian soldiers a week, who are dying for no reason whatsoever."
• "The statement made by Zelensky today will do nothing but prolong the "killing field," and nobody wants that! We are very close to a Deal, but the man with "no cards to play" should now, finally, GET IT DONE."

Why does The New York Times see the U.S. proposal as favorable to Russia? This is from The Times' report:

President Trump and his top aides demanded on Wednesday that Ukraine accede to an American-designed proposal that would essentially grant Russia all the territory it has gained in the war, while offering Kyiv only vague security assurances.

The American plan, which would also explicitly block Ukraine from ever joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was rejected by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, whose long-running dispute with Mr. Trump broke into the open two months ago in the Oval Office. The proposal also appears to call for the United States to recognize Russia’s 2014 takeover of Crimea, a region of Ukraine.

“There is nothing to talk about,” Mr. Zelensky said. “This violated our Constitution. This is our territory, the territory of Ukraine.”

TWZ's Howard Altman provides additional insight into the one-sided nature of the U.S. plan: 

“Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea,” Zelensky said at a press conference on Tuesday in Kyiv. “There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution.”

In the wake of Zelensky’s comments, a planned high-level summit in London on Wednesday was downgraded after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, a key American player in negotiations with Moscow, opted to stay home. That set off a chain reaction leading to lower-level U.S., Ukrainian and European diplomats replacing foreign ministers in meetings to find a way to cease the fighting and end the war.

Zelensky’s comments also drew the ire of U.S. President Donald Trump, who suggested that the Ukrainian leader’s stance was a threat to his own nation.

“This statement is very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama, and is not even a point of discussion,” Trump said Wednesday afternoon on Truth Social.

Later on Wednesday, Zelensky took a more conciliatory tone, thanking the U.S. and European allies for continuing to negotiate, even if at a lower level.

Emotions have run high today. But it is good that 5 countries met to bring peace closer. Ukraine, the USA, the UK, France and Germany. The sides expressed their views and respectfully received each other’s positions.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman on Wednesday welcomed the terms outlined by Vance.

“The United States is continuing its mediation efforts, and we certainly welcome those efforts,” the spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said. “Our interactions are ongoing but, to be sure, there is a lot of nuances around the peace settlement that need to be discussed.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already “offered to halt his invasion of Ukraine at the current front line as part of efforts to reach a peace deal” with Trump, The Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

During a meeting in St. Petersburg this month, Putin told Witkoff “that Moscow could relinquish its claims to areas of four partly occupied Ukrainian regions that remain under Kyiv’s control, three of the people said,” the publication explained. That includes parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Despite Trump’s efforts, peace remains elusive. And the fighting continues as both sides seek to get a better bargaining position ahead of any deal.

The Latest from the war zone, per TWZ:

On the battlefield, fighting rages on in both Russia and Ukraine but little territory has changed hands. Here are the key takeaways from the latest Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessment.

• Kursk: Russian forces recently advanced in Kursk Oblast. “Geolocated footage published on April 22 indicates that Russian forces recently advanced along the 38H-609 Sudzha-Guyevo highway south of Oleshnya (southwest of Sudzha),” according to ISW.

• Belgorod: Fighting continued in Belgorod Oblast but there were no confirmed gains by either side.

• Sumy: Russian forces continued offensive operations in northern Sumy Oblast on April 22 but did not make confirmed advances.

• Kharkiv: Russian forces continued limited offensive operations in northern Kharkiv Oblast on April 22 but did not advance.

• Luhansk: Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Borova, Lyman and Kupyansk directions on April 22 but did not make confirmed advances.

• Donetsk: Russian forces advanced in the Toretsk direction, but made no gains toward Chasiv Yar, Kurakhove, Novopavlivka, Pokrovsk, Siversek or Velyka Novosilka.

• Zaporizhzhia: Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhzhia Oblast on April 22 but did not advance.

• Kherson: Russian forces conducted limited ground assaults along the Dnipro River on April 21 and 22 but did not advance.

Russia launched a wave of drone attacks on Ukraine overnight, killing at least nine and wounding scores of others, according to Ukrainian authorities.

The biggest toll came from a strike on a bus in the city of Marhanets, transporting workers from a mining and processing plant, said Zelensky.

Ukraine carried out a drone attack on the Alabuga Shahed drone factory in Russia’s Tatarstan region, according to Ukrainian and Russian media reports. The facility is located about 760 miles from Ukraine.

It is unclear whether there was any damage inflicted.

Russian officials claim that four drones were shot down and that there was no damage or injuries. However, the nearby Kazan airport was temporarily closed as a result of the drone activity, according to the Mash media outlet.

The Tatarstan drone assembly plant was established by Russia in April 2023, but that manufacturing effort initially used exclusively Iranian components. According to the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, by August of the same year, the Russian plant had “reassembled drones provided by Iran but … itself manufactured only drone bodies, and probably for not more than 300 of the UAVs.”

The factory is said to have transitioned to largely using Russian components.

It was previously struck in April 2024 by Ukraine using a light aircraft converted to a drone. At the time, it was the longest-range attack on Russian soil.

Video emerged on social media showing the drones attacking the facility on Wednesday and at least one being shot down.

One of Russia’s largest ammunition depots was heavily damaged by a Ukrainian drone attack on Tuesday, satellite imagery shows.  A before-and-after comparison using Sentinel SAR imaging shows that much of the 51st Arsenal of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Russian Defense Ministry was destroyed by the attack and resulting explosions. The facility is located about 37 miles from Moscow.

The facility stores about 105,000 tons of munitions, including “significant reserves of artillery shells, missiles of various types, including Iskander, Tochka-U, Kinzhal, ammunition for the Pantsir-S1, S-300, S-400 complexes, as well as Grad, Smerch, and Uragan,” Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said on Telegram. It is considered one of the most challenging targets to strike, given the level of security around it, according to Kovalenko. It had a designed capacity of 264,000 tons of various munitions and was protected by Russia’s most concentrated air defense system, Defense Express noted.

Videos emerged on social media showing massive explosions and huge fires said to have resulted from the strike.

The facility stores about 105,000 tons of munitions, including “significant reserves of artillery shells, missiles of various types, including Iskander, Tochka-U, Kinzhal, ammunition for the Pantsir-S1, S-300, S-400 complexes, as well as Grad, Smerch, and Uragan,” Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said on Telegram. It is considered one of the most challenging targets to strike, given the level of security around it, according to Kovalenko. It had a designed capacity of 264,000 tons of various munitions and was protected by Russia’s most concentrated air defense system, Defense Express noted.

Videos emerged on social media showing massive explosions and huge fires said to have resulted from the strike.

The sheer brutality of war was captured in a recently released video showing a Ukrainian soldier use his rifle butt to repeatedly pound the head of a Russian soldier during hand-to-hand combat in a trench. The Ukrainian removed the Russian’s helmet and continued striking. Finally, after the Russian appeared to be dead, the Ukrainian shoots him.

Ukrainian forces released a rare image of a U.S.-donated Special Operations Craft-Riverine in service with Kyiv’s special operations forces. The vessel was equipped with a pair of M134 Miniguns, a 40mm Mk.19 grenade launcher, and an M2 Browning HMG.

Earlier this year, we told you about how Russia had erected a mile-long mesh net tunnel to protect its forces against Ukrainian drone attacks. Well, it turns out that these tunnels, which Ukraine has also started using, have a potentially huge downside. Used largely to protect logistics movements, the netting can be easily spotted, giving a clear indication of troop and equipment movements