Paper Peace, Real Lives: Inside the Controversial 28-Point Plan That Could Redraw Ukraine
On a late spring morning that felt ordinary in Kyiv — vendors selling hot varenyky on a street corner, children in bright backpacks weaving between trams — the world quietly received a document that could upend everything people here have fought to protect.
The 28-point framework, circulated in draft form and reportedly backed by former US President Donald Trump, reads like a legal roadmap and a geopolitical Rorschach test at once. It promises reconstruction funds, diplomatic thawing with Moscow and a ceasefire enforced by an American-led “Peace Council.” It also requires Ukraine to codify limits on its own sovereignty — constitutional language forbidding NATO membership, lines on maps that leave Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk effectively under Russian control, and freezes on contested territories such as Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
The contours of the offer
At its core the plan is transactional: security guarantees for Kyiv in exchange for territorial accommodation. It proposes a comprehensive non-aggression pact between Russia, Ukraine and European states, mediated talks between NATO and Moscow, and an American-Russian working group to police compliance.
There are also promises of money. The draft suggests deploying $100 billion of frozen Russian assets into a US-led reconstruction effort in Ukraine, with the United States taking half the profits; European partners are asked to add another $100 billion. It proposes reintegrating Russia into global institutions — rejoining the G8 and lifting sanctions contingent on compliance.
And there are details that strike at the daily lives of Ukrainians: obligations to keep the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant under IAEA supervision with power shared between the two countries, a commitment to discharge prisoners and reunite families, and a 100-day clock to elections in Kyiv.
What this would mean on the ground
“It sounds like a tidy contract on a laptop,” said Olena, 42, a schoolteacher in a suburb of Dnipro whose brother returned home last year after being wounded. “But you can’t trade a city for a promise.” Her voice tightened. “People live in these places. They loved them. They planted trees there. You can’t simply write them off.”
For millions of Ukrainians, the war has been a catalogue of dislocations. UN agencies estimate that well over 8 million people fled the country since 2022 while several million more remain internally displaced. Cities have been shredded in places; WHO and humanitarian groups report thousands of civilian deaths, with infrastructure and industry damaged on a scale that development institutions have warned will cost hundreds of billions to restore.
Imagine, then, a line on a map where whole neighborhoods, schools and hospitals fall on one side or another. For families in towns like Beryslav or parts of Kherson, the proposal to “freeze” front lines is a reminder that frozen conflicts seldom stay frozen for long.
Money, reconstruction and the heavy ledger
“Rebuilding Ukraine will require sustained international finance and technical support,” said Dr. Amal Hassan, a reconstruction economist who has worked with the World Bank on post-conflict planning. “Estimates vary, but comprehensive recovery will run into the low hundreds of billions, and not all of that can be shouldered by one nation.”
The draft’s notion of using $100 billion in frozen Russian assets feels at once tempting and legally thorny. Western countries froze hundreds of billions in Russian reserves and private assets in the early phase of the war; converting those holdings to finance reconstruction would involve delicate legal pathways, claims by victims, and questions about precedent. The plan’s stipulation that the US would receive 50% of profits from such investment will raise eyebrows in capitals already wary of perceived inequity.
Red lines, nuclear risk, and NATO’s shadow
Arguably the most combustible elements are the security provisions: Ukraine would be required to constitutionally renounce NATO membership and limit its armed forces — a cap cited in the draft at 600,000 personnel. NATO would agree not to station troops on Ukrainian soil, and European fighter jets would be redistributed to neighboring Poland.
“Security guarantees on paper are only as credible as the institutions that enforce them,” said Marin Petrovic, a former NATO staffer now at a Brussels think-tank. “If enforcement comes from a council chaired by a party with inconsistent relations with Russia, you have to ask whether guarantees would withstand pressure.”
The plan also touches a nerve with the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, proposing IAEA-supervised operation and a division of its electricity. The plant has been at the center of international safety concerns since 2022; any arrangement that ties energy to political concessions will be scrutinized by nuclear experts and international monitors.
Voices from Kyiv, Kherson and beyond
“I want peace,” said Ivan, a market vendor outside Kyiv who remembers blackouts and air raids. “But peace that comes from letting someone take my town? That’s not peace.”
From Moscow, the narrative is different. An unnamed Kremlin adviser told a Russian outlet that diplomatic reintegration would be a “necessary step to stabilise European security,” reflecting a view that sanctions are a lever for negotiations rather than permanent punishment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signalled willingness to discuss proposals, saying he would consider any plan that guarantees his people’s safety and sovereignty — though he has also repeatedly said that no decisions that “compromise the nation” will be taken without broad public consent. “We do not bargain with the land our ancestors bled for,” a senior Ukrainian official told me on condition of anonymity.
Why the world should care
This is not just a regional contest over borders and oil. It is a test of how the international system balances principles — territorial integrity, the norm against conquest — against the pragmatic need to halt violence. The draft taps into broader currents: great-power realignment, debates over the utility of sanctions, and rising concerns about nuclear safety in conflict zones.
Ask yourself: would you accept stability if it required accepting the loss of another people’s homeland? What price do we place on a ceasefire? On justice? These are not abstract queries. They are the decisions that will shape reconstruction budgets, refugee returns, and whether Europe’s security architecture will hold or be refashioned.
Questions left in the draft’s wake
Who decides the lines on the map? Who is held accountable for violations? How do you balance resettlement rights, property claims, and the legal and moral imperative to seek accountability for war crimes amid an amnesty clause? The draft answers some of these with firm language — and leaves others open to interpretation.
The document on the table is a beginning, perhaps; a tantalizing chance to stop the guns, perhaps; a surrender disguised as diplomacy, perhaps. It depends, as with all treaties, on who signs it, how it is enforced, and the lived realities of the people whose lives it would reconfigure.
In the end, the people in the markets, the hospitals, the shattered suburbs will bear the consequences. As debates ricochet through capitals and committee rooms, remember: peace negotiated without the voices of the vulnerable is unlikely to last. Whose voices will be heard when the ink dries?
