Olga Lautman: Russia Wrote Trump’s Peace Plan

Olga Lautman is the go-to source on Russia and Ukraine. A Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, she writes about foreign policy in Eastern Europe and organized crime networks in Russia. She writes here about the “peace plan” that Trump has worked out with Putin. The Trump administration’s fealty to Putin puts us on the sidelines–or worse, as facilitators– as Putin rains death on Ukrainian homes, schools, and civilian populations every night.

Lautman writes:

Today was another sickening day — as Russia carried out one of its more deadly terrorist attacks across Ukraine while Putin’s puppets, Trump and Steve Witkoff, continue preparing yet another Kremlin attempt to force Ukraine into surrender. Russia launched 476 drones and 48 missiles in coordinated strikes that killed 26 civilians — including three children — wounded 141 more, and leveled residential buildings in the Ukrainian city of Ternopil, tearing families apart as they slept. It is part of Russia’s deliberate, systematic effort to ensure that no Ukrainian, not even a sleeping child, is safe anywhere in their homeland. The attack violated NATO airspace, forced Poland and Romania to scramble fighter jets and activate their highest air-defense posture, and exposed once again that Russia continues to escalate because it knows the West, paralyzed by caution and U.S. political dysfunction, will do absolutely nothing to stop it.

And as Ukrainians were still digging survivors out from under rubble, Trump’s hand-picked “envoy,” real estate developer Steve Witkoff, managed to accidentally reveal the Russian source behind an Axios article by posting on X what he believed was a private DM: “He must have got this from K.” “K” is Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s money man, messenger, and the sanctioned operative who, according to Axios, spent three days in Miami, last month, drafting a secret Ukraine plan with Witkoff and other Trump loyalists. 

Witkoff’s blunder confirmed that Trump’s so-called plan is effectively being drafted by the Kremlin and exposed, yet again, that Trump is preparing to force Ukraine into territorial concessions Russia has repeatedly failed to seize on the battlefield — marking the fourth or fifth time he has attempted to coerce Kyiv into capitulation. Witkoff’s incompetence is also not new, as this is the same man who was swept up in the “Signal-gate” scandal while at a meeting with Putin in Russia, and who relied on a Russian intelligence operative as his translator under the belief that the U.S. Embassy had sent her. 

Everything about Trump and Witkoff’s behavior makes it unmistakably clear that they are operating to advance Russian interests, driven by the lure of financial deals, Kremlin-approved business ventures, and future profit streams almost certainly dangling behind their relentless enthusiasm to give Moscow exactly what it wants.

According to Axios, the 28-point framework is built entirely around Russian demands, security concerns, and territorial ambitions — a document so skewed toward Moscow’s interests that Kirill Dmitriev bragged that “the Russian position is really being heard,” which, of course, it is, because they wrote the plan. 

The absurd proposal uses polite, diplomatic language like “security guarantees” and “security in Europe,” yet behind those sanitized phrases, it would force the international community to illegally recognize Crimea and Donbas as “lawful” Russian territory, while compelling Ukraine to cut the size of its armed forces and surrender parts of its weapon stockpiles. It is a plan that ignores Russia’s ongoing genocide, its mass kidnapping of more than 21,000 Ukrainian children, its deportations, torture chambers, filtration camps, and its daily missile and drone attacks on civilian homes and infrastructure. The entire scheme is explicitly designed to pressure Ukraine into legitimizing Russian territorial theft and genocide. And despite this glaring reality, Trump views this Kremlin-drafted blueprint as if it were a serious initiative to end Russia’s aggressions, when in truth it is exactly what it is: a surrender written to the Kremlin’s specifications and carried forward by a U.S. regime eager to act as the Kremlin’s delivery service.

Then came another revelation when a senior White House official told reporters a deal could come “as soon as this week,” and when asked about Europe’s stance, responded: “We don’t really care about the Europeans.” 

Meanwhile, as Ukraine continues to be under Russia’s daily genocidal assault, the Trump regime decided to welcome clergy and lobbyists tied to the Russian Orthodox Church — an arm of Russia’s intelligence. These individuals are being given White House access to promote Russia’s long-running anti-Ukrainian propaganda campaign that Ukraine “persecutes Orthodox Christians,” a narrative manufactured by Russia as it bombs churches across Ukraine. 

And what’s missing from these discussions is Russia’s most monstrous crimes: the systematic abduction of more than 21,000 Ukrainian children — torn from their homes, transported into Russia, stripped of their names, identities, language, and, in many cases, their families — then thrown into indoctrination camps built to sever every tie to Ukraine and reprogram them as Russians. Investigations show that many of these children are also being funneled into military training programs, meaning Russia is not simply kidnapping them but preparing the oldest to eventually fight against their own country. 

While all these atrocities are taking place openly in the eyes of the world, much of the American media is covering the entire sequence of events like a show — as if the Kremlin shaping U.S. foreign policy, a Trump envoy assisting the Kremlin to write a surrender plan, and Russian Orthodox influence agents receiving White House access are simply another batch of political “scoops” rather than evidence of a national-security crisis with life and death implications. Headlines focused on Witkoff’s DM “fail,” the intrigue around a “secret plan,” and the gossip-worthy drama of politics — trivializing a moment when Russia continues slaughtering civilians and Trump is attempting to reward Kremlin genocide and cede sovereign territory that doesn’t even belong to the U.S.

Europe, meanwhile, is staring directly into the abyss as it allows Russian missiles to cut across its airspace on their way to killing Ukrainians instead of shooting them down. During yesterday’s attack, Romania confirmed that a Russian drone penetrated five miles into its territory. Poland is already bracing for more strikes near its borders, and NATO fighter jets scrambled multiple times throughout the night as Russian missiles and drones approached alliance airspace.

And this is happening as Russia escalates its warfare against NATO countries, with saboteurs attempting to blow up a train on a Polish railway line essential for delivering military aid to Ukraine, escalating incursions in Belgium, Germany, Sweden, and beyond, repeated airspace breaches, surveillance flights, and a growing series of attempts to destabilize European infrastructure — all of it underscoring that Moscow feels emboldened, unchallenged, and increasingly willing to test how far it can push.

As reprehensible as Trump’s latest attempt to force Ukraine into surrender may be, he cannot make it happen. Ukraine will never cede its land to terrorists, and Ukrainians will continue defending the country — with or without the United States. What is happening, however, is that America is sliding into complicity in Russia’s genocide and betraying European security. Despite all of this, one truth remains: Ukraine will never surrender.