The Written Wilds

Somewhere between Johannesburg and Luanda, Europe’s leaders are staring at the same document Ukraine is: a 28-point “peace plan” drafted in Washington and Moscow, not Kyiv or Brussels.

On paper, they’re flying to an EU–AU summit in Angola. In reality, they’re flying into a test of what European support for Ukraine actually means when the bill comes due and the White House starts talking deadlines instead of values.

António Costa, the new European Council president, has called a special leaders’ meeting on Ukraine in Luanda. The agenda is simple and brutal: what do we do with a US-Russian draft that demands Ukrainian concessions, sets a Thanksgiving-week clock, and was negotiated over Europe’s head?

Zelenskyy doesn’t have the luxury of theory. In a video address, he called this “one of the most difficult moments” in Ukraine’s history, a choice between losing his country’s dignity or risking the loss of its key partner.

That’s the context for this Angola summit and the Geneva talks that come before it. The geography is almost funny. The stakes are not.

What’s actually in this plan?

Strip away the spin and you get the bones of the 28-point proposal:

• Ukraine would be forced to give up all of Crimea and the entire Donbas to Russia — including areas Russia has failed to capture in 11 years of war.
• Kyiv would have to cap the size of its armed forces and give up long-range weapons.
• NATO membership? Off the table. Ukraine would be locked into a separate US security arrangement instead.
• Sanctions on Russia would be lifted over time, as Moscow “complies.”
• There’s talk of amnesty that could effectively cover war crimes committed during the full-scale invasion.
• Around $100 billion of frozen Russian state assets would be used in “US-led reconstruction,” with Washington taking 50% of the profits. Europe would be expected to throw in another $100 billion and unlock its own frozen assets.

If it looks like something drafted to fit the Kremlin’s wish list with a few American business interests stapled on, that’s because… well, look at who wrote it.

The blueprint was hammered out by Trump envoy and real-estate mogul Steve Witkoff and Kremlin-linked financier Kirill Dmitriev. European diplomats have already pointed out that parts of the text read like they were written in Russian first and then translated back.

This isn’t “Ukraine and its allies” designing a settlement. It’s a back-channel business deal with a ceasefire stapled on top.

The ultimatum: sign now, or it gets worse later

The pressure campaign around the document is as important as the text itself.

US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll flew into Kyiv, briefed NATO ambassadors and made the pitch bluntly: the deal isn’t perfect, but it has to be done soon; if Ukraine doesn’t sign, the next offer will be worse.

According to multiple accounts from that meeting, the message was basically:

• sign this agreement in days, not months;
• expect cuts or freezes in US weapons and intelligence if you refuse;
• don’t assume there’s a better Plan B waiting in a drawer.

US diplomats in Kyiv reinforced the line: “the deal doesn’t get better from here.”

Trump himself was even less subtle. Asked what happens if Zelenskyy balks, he reportedly said that if the Ukrainian president doesn’t like the deal, “they should just keep fighting, I guess.”

That’s not mediation. That’s an ultimatum wrapped in a shrug.

Europe’s reaction: polite on paper, furious off-camera

European leaders have spent the last two years telling their own voters that borders can’t be changed by force and that Ukraine’s struggle is also about European security. Now they’re reading a US-drafted plan that:

• legitimizes Russia’s land-grabs;
• caps Ukraine’s army;
• gives Washington a profit share on reconstruction financed with European-held Russian assets;
• and was negotiated without their formal input.

Officially, the line from EU and G7 leaders is careful: the US text has “important elements” but “needs additional work” before it could underpin a just and lasting peace.

Unofficially, diplomats are less delicate. Several EU officials have called the frozen-assets profit scheme scandalous, and at least one senior figure in Brussels reportedly suggested Witkoff “see a psychiatrist.” They’re not just angry that the US wants a cut — they’re worried it will blow up months of fragile talks over an EU-backed reparations loan that uses immobilized Russian assets to fund Ukraine directly without sticking European taxpayers with the bill.

On top of that, national parliaments and NATO capitals are balking at a plan that:

• tells Ukraine how big its army can be;
• restricts what weapons it can hold;
• and, by implication, puts external hands on NATO’s open-door policy.

From London to Berlin to Paris, the message is converging: this cannot be rubber-stamped as-is.

What Angola is really about

So why Angola? Because that’s where everyone already is.

Costa and the EU leadership are in Luanda for the EU–AU summit, and he’s turned the margins of that meeting into an informal European council on Ukraine. He’s invited all 27 leaders to sit down and hammer out a common line before Ukraine’s negotiators walk into the room with the Americans in Geneva.

At the same time, a separate track is opening in Switzerland. Zelenskyy has approved a heavyweight Ukrainian delegation — his chief of staff Andriy Yermak, security council head Rustem Umerov, intelligence chiefs, senior diplomats — to sit opposite the US team led by Driscoll, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Witkoff. France, Germany, the UK and EU officials are also sending national security advisors.

Europe’s short-term goal is modest but urgent:

• slow the US timeline;
• delete the most toxic concessions (forced territorial cessions, hard caps on Ukraine’s army, blanket amnesties, automatic profit-sharing on Russian assets);
• and re-anchor any text in the basics Europe has been preaching since 2022: no redrawn borders by force, no peace that leaves Ukraine unable to defend itself, and no deal that’s negotiated over Kyiv’s head again.

In other words: turn a lopsided draft into something that at least looks like a negotiation, not a dictated settlement.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is still bleeding

All of this is happening while the war itself hasn’t taken a day off.

Ukraine’s losses and Russia’s daily assault tempo haven’t magically slowed because diplomats discovered Geneva on the map again. We’ve been covering the grind around Pokrovsk, Kupiansk, Avdiivka, and Kharkiv for months: Russia throws manpower and glide bombs, Ukraine trades drones and artillery for time and space. The casualty graphs don’t care what the G20 communiqué says.

That frontline reality is exactly why the peace-plan debate hits so hard in Kyiv. The people under fire are being told:

• accept a map that rewards your attacker;
• trust security “guarantees” from states that didn’t stop the war in the first place;
• and reduce your own capacity to fight… while Russia keeps most of its arsenal.

It’s not just about flags on a map. It’s about whether any future Russian government looks at this precedent and thinks: “If we’re brutal enough for long enough, somebody in the West will eventually sign off on our gains.”

My take: what this actually tests

Here’s the opinion part, no sugar-coating.

This week doesn’t just test Ukraine. It tests everyone who spent three years saying “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” and “borders can’t be changed by force.”

If Europe helps turn this plan into a softer-edged version of the same thing — a dressed-up capitulation with better commas — then those phrases were marketing, not principles.

I don’t think Ukraine is wrong to sit down in Geneva. Walking away from the table outright would hand the White House an excuse to cut support and tell voters “we tried.” Working the draft, line by line, is the only way to expose how skewed it is and to force allies to pick a side in daylight.

Europe, though, has a simple job in Luanda:

• Draw clear red lines: no imposed ceding of territory; no externally dictated army size; no amnesty that erases Bucha, Mariupol, or Izium; no profit skim on Russian assets that turns Ukrainian ruins into a business model.
• Back Ukraine’s negotiators publicly when they push for changes.
• Make it clear that any deal touching EU or NATO commitments needs EU and NATO consent — not just a signature from Washington and Moscow.

If they can’t manage that, then the “rules-based order” they keep talking about is just a slogan on a lectern.

Zelenskyy heads into these talks knowing he may not get a good outcome — only a less-bad one. The rest of us should be honest about what’s on the table: not some abstract “peace plan,” but a precedent. One that will tell every future aggressor how long they have to hold out before the world starts negotiating over their victim’s head.