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The war in Ukraine has entered its fourth year and, while the front remains unstable, diplomacy is running fast. On the table are two peace architectures: the United States plan, built around the work of special envoy Steve Witkoff, and the European counter-proposal, shaped by the London–Paris–Berlin axis and embraced by EU institutions.
They are two different visions not only of how to stop the fighting, but of what security order should hold up Europe after Russia’s aggression.
The US plan: quick ceasefire, de facto neutrality, reintegration of Moscow
The so-called 28-point American plan was born from a back-channel negotiation between Witkoff and Russian financier Kirill Dmitriev, who is close to the Kremlin. Its main pillars are three.
1. Stop to fighting and freezing of the front line
Ukraine’s sovereignty is formally reaffirmed, but the ceasefire line essentially coincides with the current front. Kyiv would renounce the military reconquest of the Donbas and other occupied territories, postponing to later negotiations their “permanent governance”. Politically, this amounts to a near-legitimisation of Russia’s territorial gains.
2. A neutral Ukraine with military constraints
The plan provides that Kyiv renounce joining NATO and accept limits on the size and capabilities of its armed forces (particularly long-range missiles) in exchange for security guarantees led by Washington. In practice, Ukraine would become a buffer state: formally independent, but neutral and vulnerable.
3. A grand economic bargain with Russia
On the economic front, the text opens the way to Moscow’s gradual reintegration into international circuits: return to the G8, easing of sanctions, energy and industrial agreements, including in the Arctic and other strategic sectors. For Kyiv, a major reconstruction fund is envisaged, financed also with frozen Russian assets, but with a strong presence of American capital, especially in natural resources and rare earths.
Alongside this comes a sensitive political chapter: a very broad amnesty for crimes committed during the war, presidential elections in Ukraine within a very short timeframe and the creation of a “Board of Peace” tasked with overseeing the agreement. In the leaked draft, this body would be chaired directly by the US president, with indirect sanctioning powers over both Kyiv and Moscow.
Witkoff’s words, Zelensky’s and Putin’s reactions
Steve Witkoff has become the symbol of the plan’s ambiguities. In some public statements the envoy argued that the war “was not necessarily provoked by Russia”, linking it instead to Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO. It is a reading that echoes the Kremlin’s narrative about the “threat” posed by the West on Russia’s borders.
For Volodymyr Zelensky, this approach is unacceptable. The Ukrainian president has described the most critical point of the plan as the idea of freezing the front line while effectively recognising as non-Ukrainian “territories that Putin has stolen”. Accepting it, he explained, would mean violating the principle of territorial integrity on which the international order rests.
Zelensky has acknowledged that Kyiv is facing “one of the hardest pressures” since the start of the war: Ukraine risks finding itself confronted with a dramatic choice, “between national dignity and the loss of a key partner”. But his message remains clear: no peace that turns the aggressor into the political winner of the conflict.
On the other side, Vladimir Putin has called the US plan a possible basis for a “final peace agreement”, while criticising Kyiv’s stance and describing Ukrainian demands as “unrealistic”. It is a way of shifting the responsibility for the continuation of the war onto the victim of the aggression, while Russia keeps its grip on the occupied territories.
The European counter-proposal: more guarantees for Kyiv, fewer rewards for Moscow
The European Union, initially a bystander, reacted by developing its own peace architecture. First came an informal 12-point document, then a fully-fledged 28-article counter-proposal, which takes up and amends the US text.
Three political differences are decisive.
1. No “no to NATO forever”
The US draft aimed to lock in Ukraine’s neutrality. The European text deletes the explicit ban: NATO membership is presented as a future decision for the Alliance, not as an option closed for good. The door remains ajar: an important signal for Kyiv and for the capitals of the East.
2. European path and stronger security guarantees
The EU explicitly recognises Ukraine’s perspective of EU membership and proposes stronger security guarantees: if Russia attacks again, all sanctions would automatically be reintroduced and a coordinated response from the allies would be triggered. The idea is of a Western “umbrella” that falls short, for now, of a formal Article 5.
3. Reconstruction with Russian assets and a logic of responsibility
For Ukraine’s reconstruction, the EU plan envisages the use of frozen Russian sovereign assets, tying any easing of sanctions to Moscow’s behaviour. The political message is clear: those who launch an aggression pay for the damage, they are not rewarded with an immediate return to normality.
On the most sensitive point – the occupied territories – the European stance remains delicate: it accepts the idea of a ceasefire along the front line, but insists that the fate of the occupied regions must be the subject of negotiations, without any immediate legal recognition of Russia’s annexations. It is an unstable balance between military realism and the refusal to sanction a permanent mutilation of Ukraine.
European voices and the West’s dilemma
EU institutions claim a line of “just and lasting peace”. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has repeatedly stressed that ending the war cannot mean rewarding aggression: the declared goal is to silence the guns without opening the door to new invasions, in Ukraine or elsewhere.
Many European capitals – especially those on the eastern flank – look with suspicion at the idea of a peace that freezes Russian control over illegally annexed territories. In their eyes, such a compromise would weaken not only Kyiv, but the security of the entire continent: if today the fait accompli in Ukraine is accepted, who guarantees that tomorrow it will not be someone else’s turn?
For this reason, while avoiding a frontal clash with Washington, Europe is trying to “correct” the US plan: more guarantees for Ukraine, more conditionality for Russia, fewer concessions on NATO and on Ukraine’s European future.
Imposed peace or just peace?
In the background, the clash over peace plans reveals two different approaches:
- the United States, focused on the goal of quickly closing the Ukrainian front in order to turn back to other global crises, seems more open to a compromise that freezes the de facto borders and brings Moscow back into the game;
- the European Union, living the war on its own doorstep, fears that a “wrong” peace would make the continent more vulnerable and send the world the message that using tanks to change borders ultimately pays off.
In the middle stands Ukraine, which has paid the highest price in human lives and destruction. Zelensky continues to insist on his “peace formula”: withdrawal of Russian troops, justice for war crimes, security guarantees and Kyiv’s full right to choose its European future and, one day, its Atlantic one.
The real test will be whether the peace plans, American or European, can respect at least this core: a settlement that does not turn the invasion into a convenient precedent, but reaffirms that borders are not moved with tanks and that Europe is not slipping back into the logic of spheres of influence.
Only in that case would it not be a merely imposed truce, but a genuine security order in which Ukraine – and with it Eastern Europe – is no longer just someone else’s playing field, but a full part of the West it has chosen to defend.