President Donald Trump has sold out the Ukrainians, given the farm to Vladimir Putin, alienated U.S. allies—and may have revealed himself to be Moscow’s puppet.

At least, that’s how the mainstream media have portrayed the Russia-Ukraine peace deal that the White House presented last week, details of which have emerged in recent days. 

“Did Putin write this?” asked a headline yesterday in POLITICO’s national security newsletter. A New York Times report gave the impression the White House was trying to elicit Kiev’s repudiation of the deal and “create a pretext for abandoning American support for Ukraine.” And if that wasn’t the intention, the Times told its readers, then the deal was meant to force Ukraine’s capitulation.

Russia’s vicious assault on Kiev early Thursday fed into the perception that Trump is forsaking the beleaguered Ukrainians. The attack was part of a country-wide missile and drone campaign through the night.

Yet a close analysis of the proposal, or what we know about it, suggests Trump is genuinely trying to cobble together a viable deal—and exposes as misleading the melodramatic insinuations of the mainstream media.

To be sure, Russia would get much from the agreement: de jure recognition of Crimea as Russian territory; de facto recognition of Russian control over the four Ukrainian oblasts Putin claimed in 2022 to annex; sanctions relief; and a U.S. pledge that Ukraine won’t join NATO.

These concessions would be difficult to stomach for Ukrainians and Westerners, including this columnist. In a just world, Putin would not be rewarded for launching an expansionist war of aggression.

But Ukraine would get more than many people realize, enough that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky should take the deal—and soon. The one-page document laying out the proposal is reported to describe the deal as Trump’s “final offer.” 

While Kiev would not be permitted to join NATO, the deal expressly permits it to join the European Union, which has a collective defense agreement. Moreover, the deal seems to allow for European peacekeepers on Ukrainian territory after the war, and for Western nations to rearm Ukraine. At the very least, it doesn’t rule any of this out. These would be meaningful security guarantees that collectively would deter future Russian aggression. 

The issue of security guarantees for Ukraine has been perhaps the biggest stumbling block to a settlement. Kiev understandably wants some assurance—before signing a peace deal—that Russia won’t invade again in the future. But its preferred option, NATO membership, is unacceptable to Moscow and undesirable for Washington and other Western capitals. 

EU membership, European peacekeepers, and Ukrainian rearmament are the best options that Kiev could reasonably wish for. Zelensky should endorse Trump’s proposal but push for the finalized agreement to codify all three guarantees. He should also rally European leaders to commit themselves to Ukraine’s security, for example, by soliciting pledges to send peacekeepers, expedite Ukraine’s accession to the EU, and help fortify the contact line after the fighting stops.

Whether Putin would accept such an arrangement is unclear, and until this week would have seemed unlikely. But if the current proposal really does greenlight these guarantees, even if only tacitly, then that itself is evidence Moscow can get to yes. 

Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff has met with Putin three times since January, with a fourth meeting scheduled this Friday, and White House officials say they have a good idea of what the Kremlin would agree to. The peace deal would presumably have excluded these guarantees if the administration assessed they were non-starters for Moscow.

Nevertheless, Putin may drag his feet and, in the Witkoff meeting Friday, try to negotiate a more favorable deal that would facilitate the “demilitarization” of Ukraine, a key Russian war aim. But that possibility points to another good reason for the Ukrainian president to accept the current agreement now.

If Zelensky agrees to sign the deal but Putin does not, then Trump may start to see Moscow, not Kiev, as the bigger impediment to peace. In that case, Trump would be more inclined to sustain military aid to Ukraine, rather than wash his hands of a conflict that Putin—and only Putin—was refusing to end. 

By contrast, if both Zelensky and Putin reject the deal, or if only Zelensky does, then Trump really might abandon Ukraine to the dogs of war, as the New York Times and others have speculated. Trump seems to be losing patience with Zelensky, whom he clearly views as ungrateful and recalcitrant. Ukraine must avoid at all costs fighting a war against Russia without U.S. backing.

Fortunately, not only are the benefits for Ukraine of accepting Trump’s proposal more significant than Western media have reported, but the costs are lower than they seem. NATO membership was already most unlikely, but the peace deal would put pressure on the EU to admit Ukraine as compensation for not joining the Western alliance. 

As for the deal’s land-for-peace features, only Washington—not Kiev—would formally recognize that Crimea belongs to Russia, and even Zelensky has acknowledged that Ukraine’s military is unable to recapture Crimea and the illegally annexed oblasts: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. The only question has been whether Ukraine could muster enough military might to retain those parts of the four oblasts that Russia hasn’t yet captured. Under the Trump deal, it may not have to. 

This week, the Financial Times reported that Putin is willing to freeze the invasion along the current battle lines and relinquish Ukrainian-controlled territory in the four oblasts. That is a striking concession, which few analysts predicted, and may represent Ukraine’s last best hope for keeping lands that its soldiers have defended so valiantly. Many observers remain skeptical that Putin would follow through on the promise, but the peace deal’s security guarantees mean Ukraine wouldn’t need to trust Putin’s sincerity.

Given the deal’s real benefits for Ukraine, and the qualified nature of its most prominent drawbacks, Zelensky should accept Trump’s offer while it’s still on the table. If he doesn’t, the Ukrainian people may turn on him. A 2024 Gallup report showed that 52 percent of Ukrainians supported negotiations on “ending the war as soon as possible.” Of these, 52 percent said they were open to territorial concessions as part of a settlement. These numbers are likely even higher today, after months of grueling warfare and economic hardship.

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The Russia–Ukraine war has been a disaster for global security, international law, and, above all, the Ukrainian people. Westerners rightly condemn Putin’s invasion and worry that Russia will benefit from it. Yet the strident denunciations of Trump and his peace proposal are misplaced. While the ultimate responsibility for the war lies with Putin, President Joe Biden, I believe, could have averted it with smarter diplomacy.

In November 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba signed a strategic partnership charter reiterating U.S. support for Kiev to join NATO—an agreement that Robert Service, an eminent historian of Russia, called the “last straw” for Putin. As Russia amassed troops near the Ukrainian border, Biden refused to even discuss with Putin the issue of NATO expansion, which Moscow has always seen as a security threat. After the February 2022 invasion, the White House treated the war as a chance to weaken Russia, even as peace negotiations in Istanbul had opened an opportunity to end the conflict mere months after it began.

That opportunity faded, the war raged on, and three years later, Ukraine has been all but destroyed. Trump’s peace proposal isn’t perfect. But a continuation of Putin’s hellish war is intolerable.