Aggressive escapism might not be a legitimate psychological term, but it is the best way to describe the opposition to the 28-point peace plan for Ukraine pushed by Trump’s administration. Why face the harsh reality of the West’s inability to change the course of the war in Ukraine in the fourth year of all-out conflict, when one could act like EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas who said that the best peace plan should consist of only two points - keep weakening Russia and supporting Ukraine?

The reality is that ever since the failed 2023 offensive Ukraine has been losing something every single day - lives of its soldiers and civilians, swathes of territory as well as a population fleeing to the EU and Russia, pieces of valuable infrastructure (especially heating facilities crucial for surviving the winter), elements of Western support on the fiscal and military sides, and enthusiasm for the Ukrainian cause both at home and abroad. As far as a peace settlement goes, it means that every continuing day of war translates into a more comprehensive defeat when the time arrives for acknowledging the reality and signing peace accords.

Moscow holds the initiative and therefore dictates conditions. A magic solution for that conundrum might exist somewhere but it just failed to reveal itself for almost four years of the most horrible war in Europe since World War II. For now though, there is only one realistic algorithm for brokering peace in this conflict - look at the Russian conditions first, then try to reconcile them with Ukraine’s expectations.

That’s exactly what Trump’s administration has been doing as it worked on drafting the 28-point plan along with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriyev and Ukrainian envoy Rustem Umerov.

Despite the plan being publicly endorsed by Donald Trump and state secretary Marco Rubio, its opponents tried to discredit it as one conceived by the Kremlin. They initially used linguistic analysis, looking for signs of Runglish in the text and - by and large - revealing their own lack of Russian proficiency.

Then came Bloomberg leaks with secretly recorded conversations between Steve Witkoff and Russian officials, which the critics of the agreement tried to sell as a manifestation of Witkoff’s treasonous and Kremlin-controlled nature. But Trump and Rubio dismissed these allegations again and the origins of the leak itself may now generate a much bigger scandal than its content. Who tried to undermine the US president’s strategic foreign policy efforts - anti-Trump elements with the US intelligence community or one of the US allies? In the media, fingers were pointed at Europeans and even at Ukrainians - not unexpectedly since they are obviously trying to derail the plan by diplomatic means anyway.

These attempts are a larger than life manifestation of aggressive escapism - pretending that one could draw a viable plan for ending this war that doesn’t take Russian conditions, unfair and brutal as they are, into account.

Whether the skeleton text of the plan was prepared in Moscow and how much Runglish was slipped into it is not the point. The point is that the West is incapable of changing the course of this war in Ukraine’s favour within a reasonable timeframe. The suffering and damage already inflicted on Ukrainians are incomparable with any gains that could be realistically achieved even in the best-case scenario in a very distant future should Ukraine stay in the fight. Subjecting Ukrainians to greater suffering, endangering the very existence of Ukrainian statehood for the sake of a delusion is becoming an increasingly immoral pattern of political behaviour.

As ever, since the start of this war, the choice lies between accepting a plan that largely aligns with Russian demands (while trying as much as you can to alter them in Ukraine’s favour) on the one hand and, on the other, ending up with a harsher version of the same plan many lives and many square kilometres of the lost territory later.

A not so Russian plan

The opponents of Trump’s plan tried to present one of the illegally recorded conversations leaked to Bloomberg as Witkoff mentoring Dmitriyev on how to push the peace plan to Trump. But if you read the transcript carefully, it transpires that Witkoff is trying to secure Putin’s call with Trump in which Putin would praise the Trump administration for achieving peace in Gaza, and agreeing that the Russo-Ukrainian war could be ended as per the same blueprint (Gaza peace was preceded by a 20-point plan penned by Trump’s administration). That call would precede a meeting between Trump and Zelenskiy in which the plan would be set in stone. In short, Trump is trying to get Putin firmly on board.

This task is not simple because the plan, as presented to the public, is clearly not a Russian wish list, since it contains a number of provisions the Kremlin is very unlikely to endorse. That, for instance, includes the 600,000 cap on the size of the Ukranian army. Moscow is not going to tolerate a hostile force half the size of all EU armies combined on its front porch - that’s exactly the kind of eventuality it was trying to avoid by starting the war.

The same goes for the absence of any limitations for the kind of weapons which could be deployed in Ukrainian territory, such as missiles like Taurus and Tomahawks. The protection of the Russian language and Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church in Ukraine along the lines of EU standards, as suggested in the document, won’t be accepted either. From the Russian perspective, EU standards with regards to minorities are fully manifested in Baltic countries where, according to Moscow, Russian speakers are being discriminated against.

Whenever an accord is reached the resulting text will be considerably less appetising for Ukraine than the draft aired by Trump’s administration. That’s something which escapes the conversation - itself driven by aggressive escapism - as it focuses primarily on issues Russia will not agree to by definition such as NATO-styled security guarantees, Western boots on the ground in any shape or form, etc.

At the end of the day, neither Putin’s call, nor the Trump-Zelenskiy summit materialised because Ukraine disagreed with at least nine provisions of the 28-point document during the talks between Rubio and Zelenskiy’s chief of staff Yermak.

But the peace process, spearheaded by Trump’s administration, didn’t stop as US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll proceeded to mediate between representatives of Russian and Ukrainian military intelligence services who landed for talks in Abu Dhabi. Held at this level, the talks could potentially dwell on technical issues, such as implementing a ceasefire or potentially, on the Ukrainian withdrawal from the unoccupied part of Donetsk region, as is demanded by Russia.

Zelenskiy’s conundrum

Despite all the performative rhetoric, the talks will likely continue because Zelenskiy’s administration appears to be cornered, internationally as well as domestically.

On the front line, we are nearing a phase whereby the cumulative mass of deceptively slow Russian advances is bound to translate into a major change in the battlefield landscape. Without being in a hurry, the Russians are finishing the siege of Pokrovsk agglomeration, while simultaneously besieging three major Ukrainian strongholds in the north - Kupiansk, Siversk and Lyman. The fall of any of them will radically change the equation for the northern Donetsk agglomeration, which Russia insists Ukraine should hand over in exchange for peace.

The Russians are already entering the outskirts of Kostiantynivka, on the southern side of that agglomeration, and the imminent fall of Pokrovsk will accelerate the battle for that city.

Meanwhile on the southern flank, the Russian army has besieged Huliapole - one of only two significant Ukrainian strongholds on the way to Zaporizhzhia, a million-plus city prior to the all-out war.

The political risk of the Russian advance is that by the time it becomes clear that the north of the Donetsk region will also fall, Putin will ramp up his demands, punishing Ukraine for intransigence. First of all, Ukraine will simply lose this land without getting anything in exchange as proposed in the 28-point plan which envisages Russia swapping this area for occupied parts of other regions. Secondly, Putin might at that point demand that Ukraine withdraws from what would remain under its control in the Zaporizhzhya region, including the regional capital, one of Ukraine’s main industrial hubs.

As its army keeps advancing, Russia continues to pound Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to demonstrate its ability to leave large population centres in Ukraine without heating during winter, which could in turn trigger a large-scale influx of Ukrainian refugees into EU countries in the coming months.

As Driscoll reportedly told European diplomats in Kyiv, Russia is stockpiling more missiles than it’s firing at Ukraine - a sign that it is either preparing for - or is capable of a massive strike to finish off Ukraine’s power grid.

Funding questions

The question of Ukraine’s funding next year is also an issue as EU members can’t agree on financing Ukraine using frozen Russian assets; a drastic measure that could have a far-reaching impact on the international reputation of European financial institutions and eventually hit European taxpayers. Top EU officials, like Kaja Kallas, offer Ukraine very little besides defiant rhetoric which disqualifies them as negotiating partners not only for Moscow, but also increasingly for Washington. State secretary Rubio recently refused to meet with Kallas, according to Politico.

On the domestic front, Zelenskiy is facing an ever-increasing threat of losing a parliamentary majority, thus turning him into a lame-duck president, as a result of the anti-corruption investigation that rocked Ukraine in recent months. Judging by the latest developments, it is visibly inching towards indicting his Security Council chief Rustem Umerov and - most crucially - his chief of staff Andriy Yermak. The latter is seen by many as the greatest obstacle to successful peace talks.

By no means guaranteed, a decision by the EU to keep funding Ukraine through 2026 is the last hope for Zelenskiy to stay afloat. But it’s hardly enough - the crisis Ukraine is facing is too multidimensional for that decision alone to motivate the war-torn country to stay in the fight.

Hawkish politicians and lobbyists who insist on such are increasingly looking like the characters in the film Don’t Look Up who are engaged in all sorts of frantic activities, while avoiding the looming catastrophe.