28 points of nothing: A complete surrender of Ukraine?

It concerns a plan that, according to the claims of Axios, was developed secretly by U.S. and Russian officials without Ukraine’s consent.

According to media reports, the ‘peace agreement’ would require Ukraine to:

• withdraw its troops from the non-occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions;

• reduce the Armed Forces of Ukraine to 50% of their current manpower;

• forgo ‘key categories of weaponry’.

In return, Ukraine would reportedly receive vague U.S. ‘security guarantees’.

Additionally, some Western media have specified that the agreement could also:

• ban the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine;

• prohibit Kyiv from receiving long-range foreign weapons capable of striking deep inside Russia;

• force Ukraine to make the Russian language an official state language;

• oblige Ukraine to grant official status to the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Commenting on these proposals, ISW stresses that transferring still entirely unoccupied territories of the Donetsk region to Russian control and freezing the front line in southern Ukraine would ‘disproportionately’ benefit Russia.

Analysts recall that the territory of Donetsk region currently under Ukrainian control also includes areas vital to Ukraine and its economy, as well as the so-called Donbas ‘fortress belt’ — the cities of Druzhkivka, Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, and Sloviansk.

These cities have formed Ukraine’s main defensive line in the region since 2014 and represent a critically important defensive, industrial, and logistical hub for Ukrainian forces, ISW notes.

The Institute for the Study of War adds that Russia has been trying unsuccessfully to capture this belt for more than a decade, and that it would likely take several more years to seize these cities at the current pace of Russian advances.

‘The proposed peace plan would hand over these important territories to Russia, apparently without any concrete concessions in return, saving Russia the time, effort, and manpower it would otherwise have to expend elsewhere in Ukraine in the event of renewed aggression,’ ISW experts warn.

ISW further stresses that the Kremlin has shown no signs of being willing to consider peace talks or a peace agreement before Ukraine withdraws its troops from the non-occupied parts of Donbas.

Moreover, the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk region would also give Russian forces more favorable positions from which to launch new offensives in southern Kharkiv region and further into the eastern parts of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Such a withdrawal would also create conditions for the occupiers to advance across the Oskil River in the eastern Kharkiv region.

Russian forces would then likely attempt to threaten the capture of Kharkiv from several axes simultaneously.

Freezing the front line in southern Ukraine would also give Russia an opportunity to rest and regroup for future offensives toward Kherson or Zaporizhzhia — which the Kremlin and Russian officials have already identified as targets, ISW recalls.

Thus, Russia would have a choice of several complementary offensive operations if Ukraine were to concede the Donetsk region and agree to freeze the southern front line, especially if this happened without effective security mechanisms preventing future Russian aggression, and if Ukraine accepted Russia’s demand to reduce the size and capabilities of its armed forces.

Furthermore, the secretly developed peace plan is assessed as essentially identical to Russia’s demands presented in Istanbul at the beginning of the invasion in spring 2022 — a time when battlefield conditions were clearly far more favorable to the Russian Federation.

However, ISW emphasizes that the situation on the ground has changed significantly since the 2022 Istanbul negotiations, even though Russia’s demands clearly have not.

It is also recalled that since then, Ukraine has not only managed to push the occupiers out of the north, but has also liberated significant territories in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.

In total, Ukrainian Defense Forces have liberated more than 50 percent of the territory captured by Russia since 2022, forcing Russian troops into exhausting offensive operations and limiting their rate of advance to a slow walking pace, ISW notes.

Experts from the Institute for the Study of War also conclude that Russia’s Istanbul demands in 2022 would have amounted to Ukraine’s complete surrender, a permanent ban on Ukraine joining NATO, strict limitations on the Ukrainian military, and a prohibition on Ukraine receiving Western military assistance — with no restrictions whatsoever on the size or capabilities of Russian forces.