The latest proposal emerging from Washington should stop people in their tracks, not because it offers a genuine pathway to peace, but because of what it reveals about the direction US policy is now taking toward Ukraine, and the wider geopolitical reality forming around it.
Reports suggest the United States is offering “security guarantees” to Ukraine on the condition that it withdraws from Donbas. Strip away the language, and it becomes something far more familiar: pressure on Kyiv, concessions to Moscow, and yet again, a process where the burden of compromise falls on the country that has been invaded rather than the one doing the invading.
At the heart of this proposal lies a dangerous imbalance. Ukraine, a nation that has endured relentless missile strikes, drone attacks, and the systematic destruction of its cities and infrastructure, is being asked to give up its own territory in exchange for promises. At the same time, there is no equivalent pressure being applied to Vladimir Putin to withdraw forces, reduce operations, or even commit to a meaningful ceasefire, at least none publicly. That is not diplomacy in any recognisable form, but pressure applied in one direction only.
Which raises the central question: what are these “security guarantees” actually worth?
Ukraine has already answered that question through experience. In 1994, under the Budapest Memorandum, it surrendered the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for assurances of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Those assurances did not prevent Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, nor did they stop the full-scale invasion in 2022. When tested, they proved meaningless.
That history matters now, because the current proposal does not just echo those past failures, it risks building directly on them. Guarantees, when stripped of enforcement, are not guarantees at all. They are political cover, creating the illusion of stability while removing the very mechanisms that give such assurances weight.
What is unfolding now is not one isolated policy shift, but a pattern that becomes clearer the closer you look. While Ukraine is being pushed toward concessions, the sanctions policy is moving in a direction that benefits the Kremlin. Sanctions waivers and reduced enforcement have already helped drive up Russian oil revenues, feeding directly into its war effort. At the same time, strengthening Iran, another regime deeply embedded in Russia’s military supply chain.
From the ground, we visibly see the drones that strike Ukrainian cities, the infrastructure that continues to be targeted, and in the reality that Iranian-backed forces are simultaneously attacking US positions in the Middle East. These are no longer separate conflicts but connected fronts within the same strategic framework, and yet, US policy appears to be loosening pressure on both Moscow and Tehran at the same time.
At this stage, it no longer looks like confusion or poor coordination. It looks like a direction of travel that aligns, whether intentionally or not, with Russia’s long-term strategy.
Because for Moscow, this war has never just been about territory. It has always been about endurance, dragging out negotiations, fracturing Western unity, exploiting political cycles while waiting for fatigue to set in. That is something you feel on the ground daily, the longer the pressure eases, the more space Russia gains, not necessarily in territory, but in time and momentum and just before a spring offensive.
Now place alongside that strategy a proposal that asks Ukraine to withdraw from its own land. It is difficult to see that as anything other than delivering, in part, the outcome Russia has been working toward since 2014.
Overlaying all of this is an uncomfortable but unavoidable reality: there is no credible scenario in which a Trump administration goes to war with Russia. None. If military deterrence is effectively off the table, and economic pressure is simultaneously being diluted, then the question becomes unavoidable, what enforces these guarantees?
The answer, at present, appears to be words, with Ukraine already testing the value of those, and they failed.
What makes this moment particularly dangerous is not just the proposal itself, but the broader pattern forming around it. From a personal perspective, having fought here and seen how quickly circumstances shift when support wavers, this does not feel like a single policy decision, it’s feeling like something being gradually pulled away inch by inch.
First come the signals around reducing or halting direct military aid, something that the Trump administration tried to do long before any formal shift in policy and his inauguration. Then the rollback of humanitarian support, then the quieter decisions, less visible, but no less significant, such as the defunding of organisations responsible for documenting Russian war crimes.
Individually, each of these decisions can be defended, explained away, or presented as part of a wider recalibration, but taken together, they point in one direction. Pressure is easing on the aggressor—Russia, led by an ICC-indicted war criminal—while the demands placed on Ukraine, a nation fighting for its survival, continue to grow. Accountability is quietly being eroded, even as reliance on vague assurances is expected to increase. This is where the concept of “security guarantees” becomes not just flawed, but dangerous, because they are being presented at the very moment the structures that would give them meaning are being dismantled.
The consequences of that now extend far beyond Ukraine. If Russia is seen to benefit from sustained aggression, whether through territorial concessions, weakened sanctions, or negotiations that favour its position, the message does not stop at Europe’s borders. It travels.
It tells others that force, applied over time, works, endurance pays & that resistance can eventually be negotiated away.
This is how precedents are set. Once you normalise the idea that borders can be changed through sustained aggression, and that the international response will soften over time, you do not prevent future conflicts, you create the conditions for them. Taiwan is the obvious example, but it will not be the only one I’m sure .
This is why the current trajectory should be viewed for what it is: a red flag. Not because of a single proposal, but because of the broader pattern it reflects. A pattern of pressure on Ukraine to concede, relief—direct or indirect—for Russia’s economy, a lack of credible deterrence, and an increasing gap between stated objectives and actual policy outcomes.
Perhaps most telling of all is what remains absent. There is still no equivalent pressure on Putin. No clear demand to withdraw, no enforced consequences for escalation and no indication that the aggressor is being treated as the party that must compromise.
Instead, the burden remains where it has always been—on Ukraine.
That imbalance is not just flawed, it is dangerous, because if this approach holds, the outcome will not be peace. It will be a pause, a temporary freeze that allows Russia to regroup, rearm, and return, just as it has done before.
The difference this time is that Ukraine will be weaker, and the guarantees it relied upon will have already been tested, and failed, again.
That ship hasn’t just sailed for me, it sank, and if this continues, we are not just watching history repeat itself,
we are accelerating it.
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