Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0The timing for United States President Donald Trump\u2019s new peace plan and a menacing ultimatum for Ukraine could not be worse.<\/p>\n Russian troops, drones and fog-generating robots have punctured the southeastern front line as civilians in the city of Zaporizhzhia hear new, harrowing notes in their almost nightly cannonade \u2013 the sound of heavy gliding bombs.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n At the same time, Russian shelling keeps destroying Ukraine\u2019s power generation and transmission infrastructure, causing hours-long blackouts as the sun sets at 4pm and night temperatures plunge below freezing point.<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Ukraine was in a state of mourning yet again, after Russian attacks killed at least six people overnight in Kyiv. In Russia, at least three were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack in the southern Rostov region.<\/p>\n To some Ukrainian servicemen, Trump\u2019s plan, which favours Russia\u2019s wartime ambitions, is a bitter reality check and a reminder of squandered opportunities.<\/p>\n The collective West\u2019s \u201chelplessness and cynicism are endless\u201d, Bohdan, a Ukrainian drone operator on leave in Kyiv from the eastern front, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cThey kept withholding military aid, couldn\u2019t agree on how to respond, and we keep paying for their indecisiveness with our blood, the blood of our children,\u201d he said, withholding his last name according to wartime regulations.<\/p>\n He retains some optimism, believing Moscow has limited ability to advance.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took them three years to seize 1 percent of our territory, and it cost them a million soldiers, killed or wounded,\u201d Bohdan said.<\/p>\n After overwhelming successes in early 2022, Russian forces withdrew from around Kyiv, all of northern Ukraine and areas in the east and south.<\/p>\n Since then, every town they seized is reported to cost them tens of thousands of servicemen.<\/p>\n \u201cAt that rate, they will have wasted every Russian male, and it still won\u2019t conquer us,\u201d he joked sardonically.<\/p>\n Amid the bloodshed, Ukraine has been rocked by a corruption scandal that involves the closest allies of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who came to power in 2019 on an anticorruption ticket.<\/p>\n When Trump offered a 28-point peace plan last week \u2013 and threatened to freeze military aid if Kyiv did not agree to it by Thursday, November 27, Ukrainians felt gutted and betrayed.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything and everyone is against us. And now this halfwit in the White House wants us to capitulate. Again,\u201d said Yevheniya Demyanenko, 42, who sells seeds, pots and fertiliser in southeastern Kyiv.<\/p>\n Huddled in a warm overcoat, as a gasoline-fuelled power generator rattled outside her shop feeding a pallid lamp, a small heater and electronic devices, she speculated that Russian President Vladimir Putin must have \u201csomething so disgustingly compromising on [Trump] that he betrays everything America is built on\u201d.<\/p>\n Washington said later that the deadline is \u201cfluid\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s plan resembles the Kremlin\u2019s wish list, with short and vague clauses that provide few security guarantees to Ukraine, a Kyiv-based analyst said.<\/p>\n One clause stipulates that Kyiv loses Washington\u2019s undefined security guarantees in case Ukraine \u201cattacks\u201d Russia. Another demands that Ukraine enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO.<\/p>\n A former Russian diplomat sees the plan as a triple triumph over Ukraine, Washington\u2019s diplomacy and Europe\u2019s entire security architecture.<\/p>\n The plan \u201crestricts Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty, offers no credible security guarantees, and signals Washington\u2019s willingness to yield ground to the Kremlin\u201d, Boris Bondarev, who quit his Ministry of Foreign Affairs job to protest against Moscow\u2019s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cPutin sees it as proof of US weakness \u2013 and as an opening to pressure NATO into revising Europe\u2019s entire security architecture,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n According to Mariia Kucherenko, an expert with the Come Back Alive think tank, \u201cthe victim and the aggressor were equalled\u201d in the proposal.<\/p>\n \u201cHas Ukraine ever attacked Russia? Or do they mean attempts to reclaim occupied Ukrainian territories?\u201d<\/p>\n She also lashed out at a clause that Washington would recognise Crimea and the southeastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk \u2013 known collectively as the Donbas \u2013 \u201cas de facto Russian\u201d.<\/p>\n Russia has occupied most of Luhansk and about three-quarters of Donetsk, and wants Kyiv to cede the rest \u2013 including fortified strongholds and commanding heights that could ease Moscow\u2019s ability to invade deeper into Ukraine.<\/p>\n In return, Moscow pledges to freeze the southern front-line and withdraw from toeholds in the north.<\/p>\n Kucherenko said the plan does not detail the guarantees behind the \u201cde facto\u201d recognition that is virtually equalled to Russia\u2019s \u201cde jure\u201d control.<\/p>\n She also lambasted a laconic clause about Ukraine \u201cholding elections in 100 days\u201d that does not specify \u201cafter what?\u201d<\/p>\n If a vote is held after a ceasefire, would there be sanctions for violating it \u2013 and who would monitor and enforce them? she wondered.<\/p>\n \u201cUntil there are \u2026 answers to these questions, there won\u2019t be any ceasefire,\u201d Kucherenko said.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, any elections held after a ceasefire instead of after a full peace settlement carry enormous security risks for voters, she said.<\/p>\n Another question looms. Who is going to secure the vote of Ukrainians in occupied regions or Ukrainian refugees abroad?<\/p>\n Moscow-appointed \u201cauthorities\u201d forced most residents in occupied regions to get Russian passports, otherwise barring them from medical and legal services and forcing them to quit their jobs.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are many questions, and there isn\u2019t a single answer,\u201d Kucherenko said.<\/p>\n To her, the plan resembles a \u201cclassic\u201d intelligence operation, when Moscow\u2019s wish list is published without considering Kyiv\u2019s or the European Union\u2019s positions, she added.<\/p>\n The publication was timed to Ukraine\u2019s political and energy crises \u2013 and the anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity: Huge, months-long protests that began on November 21, 2013 and installed a pro-Western government.<\/p>\n With all that in mind, Ukrainian diplomats \u201cneed to keep our head cool, communicate with European partners and define \u2013 firmly, calmly and consequentially \u2013 the Ukrainian position,\u201d said Kucherenko.<\/p>\n Ukrainian parliament Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk said on Monday that Kyiv would not agree to recognising Russia\u2019s occupation, limiting the Ukrainian armed forces to 600,000 and vetoes on Kyiv\u2019s membership in NATO.<\/p>\n Kyiv said any peace should be \u201cdignified\u201d and \u201clasting\u201d, and that the plan needs to be updated and refined.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, European leaders said the plan should include an immediate ceasefire, allow Kyiv to eventually join NATO, and use frozen Russian funds to restore Ukraine.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a pure \u2018leave-us-alone\u2019 declaration,\u201d Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany\u2019s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera, describing the Ukrainian and European reaction to the US\u2019s proposal.<\/p>\n \u201cRussia won\u2019t capitulate now, but has decent chances to reach the outskirts of the [southeastern city of] Zaporizhzhia and [the eastern city of] Dnipro by spring, and the EU has chances to accept five to seven million Ukrainian refugees from frozen cities,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013\u00a0The timing for United States President Donald Trump\u2019s new peace plan and a menacing ultimatum for Ukraine could not be worse. Russian troops, drones and fog-generating robots have punctured the southeastern front line as civilians in the city of Zaporizhzhia hear new, harrowing notes in their almost nightly cannonade \u2013 the sound of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"Smoke](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/2025-11-19T101747Z_949221896_RC25JJ9Y4Q25_RTRMADP_3_UKRAINE-CRISIS-ATTACK-TERNOPIL-1764069071.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C531&quality=80\")
US \u2018wants us to capitulate\u2019<\/h2>\n
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