On 18 November the US revealed its 28-point plan for settling NATO’s disastrous proxy war in Ukraine. It includes significant territorial concessions to Russia, cutting Ukraine’s military by a third of its current size, a block on Ukraine joining NATO and on NATO stationing troops in Ukraine. Its terms would amount to a Ukrainian conditional surrender. Ukraine faces a major military-political crisis and US imperialism, its largest single backer, is trying to cut a deal while it still can. The major European imperialists, including Britain, are in disarray. They seek to continue confronting Russia and risk being muscled out of the settlement and the carve up of Ukraine.
As we go to press, the exact terms of a potential settlement are still being hashed out, but the initial US plan reflects the relative bargaining positions of US, European and Russian imperialism, the proxy war’s belligerents. On 23 November US and Ukrainian delegations met in Geneva for fraught negotiations based on the 28-point plan. After two full days, the Financial Times reported a new 19-point deal had been agreed, leaving the more contentious issues, such as territorial concessions and NATO’s relation to Russia and Ukraine, aside for now, to be discussed by US and Ukrainian presidents Trump and Zelensky. Zelensky’s political credibility is tied to Ukraine’s ‘defence’ against Russia, so he has made a show of opposing the more extreme points, including territorial concessions, promising not to ‘betray’ Ukraine.
However, Ukraine is a NATO proxy sustained entirely by Western, and especially US, military support. The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to cut off aid to Ukraine – and has severely curtailed it since Trump’s inauguration in January – to force Ukraine to accept concessions necessary for a US-Russian settlement. It has little choice but to accept US demands. As Trump chided Zelensky during his White House visit in March and reiterated on 21 November: ‘you don’t have the cards’.
Militarily, Russia has the cards. Whilst the 28-point plan would see Ukraine withdraw from the remaining 30% of Donetsk it currently defends, it is being forced out anyway by the gradual Russian advance. As we go to press, Pokrovsk, a key strategic city in Donetsk, is surrounded and set to fall to Russian forces imminently. For 18 months the two sides have fought fiercely for Pokrovsk: its fall would mark the most significant Ukrainian military defeat since the loss of Bakhmut in May 2023. Meanwhile, Ukraine faces a serious financial crisis with a projected €135.7bn deficit across 2026 and 2027. Zelensky finds himself in a major corruption scandal after seven of his close associates were implicated in a plot to extract kickbacks worth $100m from Ukrainian energy projects. Ukraine is set for its toughest winter by far since the war began in February 2022 as Russia ferociously targets Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing frequent and widespread blackouts. Given the military situation, any watering down of the US plan makes Russia less likely to accept a settlement.
For US imperialism, continuing the war risks Russia advancing further and leaving less of Ukraine to loot. On 30 April 2025 Ukraine signed its ‘minerals deal’, granting US imperialism preferential access to Ukraine’s potentially rich mineral wealth. The US is prepared to grant Russia most of its ‘maximalist’ demands, so long as they leave sufficient plunder for a return on the military and financial ‘aid’ the US has poured into Ukraine so far. Meanwhile, US imperialism has its focus elsewhere: the Middle East, the Caribbean and China. The Trump administration also seeks rapproche-ment with Russia to open up Russia’s vast natural resources to exploitation by US capital – expressed in clauses for Russia to be ‘reintegrated into the global economy’, a staged lifting of sanctions and inviting Russia to rejoin the G8.
The US is looking to commandeer part of the $242bn of Russian assets frozen by the EU. The peace plan proposes to invest $100bn of this in a US-led effort to ‘rebuild and invest in Ukraine’, with 50% of the profits going to the US. The EU will add $100bn to ‘reconstruction’, and the remainder will be invested in a ‘US-Russian investment vehicle’ for ‘joint projects’ in both countries, likely natural resources and technology. The EU commission had earmarked the frozen assets for a ‘reparations loan’ to Ukraine, which would secure European imperialism a share in the loot. The US feels it can muscle Europe out of a deal, which is relatively still too weak, politically and militarily, to assert its its interests at the table.
Meanwhile, Europe’s major imperialist powers, including Britain, are determined to confront Russia, whose growing influence threatens their interests in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. They are furiously trying to stunt US-Russian negotiations and postpone any measures which would threaten Ukraine’s role as a militarised anti-Russian proxy. On 23 November Britain, Germany and France – the ‘coalition of the willing’ – drafted their own amended peace plan which would allow Ukraine to join NATO, allow NATO to station troops in Ukraine, and increase the cap on Ukraine’s military from 600,000 troops in the US plan to 800,000. On 24 November Russia rejected it out of hand, with Putin’s foreign policy aide describing it as ‘unconstructive’.
Any ‘peace’ settlement of NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine will be a reactionary division of Eastern Europe between US, European and Russian imperialism – with the relative strength of each dictating their share in the loot. In 1917 Lenin said, in the absence of socialist revolution, ‘peace between the capitalist States will be only a truce, an interlude, a time of preparation for a fresh slaughter of the peoples.’ NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine has catalysed an enormous military buildup in Europe, whose major imperialist powers are preparing for more and further confrontation with Russia. Lenin’s warning rings true today.
George O’Connell
