Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump during the summit in Alaska in August 2025 (Photo: EPA)

Published by informally the peace plan for the Russian-Ukrainian war is rather a provocation of the dictator Vladimir Putin to try to use the U.S. president Donald Trump to issue an ultimatum to Ukraine. This opinion for text LIGA.net expressed by the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Foreign Policy from Servants of the people Oleksandr Merezhko.

"If you start thinking about this peace plan, it looks very strange. Its text has not been officially made public. Both Trump and Putin are very cautious about endorsing or evaluating this plan. I assume or suspect that Trump has not even read the plan. [...] This is more of a provocation by Putin, which he has done, primarily with the help of [his special representative] Dmitriev, using [US special envoy] Vitkoff and hoping to use Trump," he said.

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Merezhko said that this plan is a trap even for the American president, as the existing document contains virtually all of the Russians' demands.

According to the MP, the task of the Russian dictator was to promote this so-called peace plan with the help of Witkoff and, through Trump, to put it forward as an ultimatum to Ukraine, realizing that it would refuse it.

"And then it can discredit Ukraine in Trump's eyes, and even [Russians] hope that Trump will stop helping Ukraine. This is Putin's plan. So it's more like a special operation," the MP said.

However, he believes that when the American president read the contents of the plan, he realized that he should not make such a document public and say that "this is my plan, I [officially] support it."

"My opinion is that Trump is beginning to realize that this is a mistake on his part. Now the Europeans will come to him and say: "What kind of text is this, absolutely unacceptable?" And the solution is to simply ignore it," Merezhko summarized.

  • For the same purpose text LIGA.net Merezhko said that Ukraine should not focus on Trump's deadlines, and analyst Melnyk reminded that the US president has already postponed or canceled their deadlines at the last minute.
  • Meanwhile, an interlocutor involved in the negotiation process said LIGA.net that the United States is putting pressure on President Zelensky to adopt peace plan without changes.
  • on November 23, the Ukrainian delegation started working on the peace plan in Switzerland: first, they met with Britain, France, and Germany, and then they were to hold talks with the United States. In general, a number of meetings are planned in different formats (read more here).