Oppose Trump’s Surrender Plan for Ukraine

Ukraine Solidarity Network (US)

Posted November 23, 2025

Russian invasion of Ukraine, Viewsridge, CC BY-SA 4.0

IMPERIALIST BULLYING IS rarely so open and brazen. Donald Trump demanded last week that Ukraine accept his surrender plan for Ukraine by Thanksgiving Day, November 27, or lose what little remains of U.S. support for Ukraine, which is the sharing of satellite intelligence about Russian military positions and the sale of arms to Ukraine via European buyers. Trump stopped all other military and economic aid to Ukraine when he returned to office in January.

Trump Always Chickens Out when it comes to threatened pressure on Russia. All the pressure has been on Ukraine to capitulate. Trump’s so-called “peace” plan gave him the excuse to not enact the secondary sanctions on countries buying oil from the Russian oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft that were scheduled to go into effect on November 21.

Trump’s new plan is the fourth iteration of basically the same so-called peace plan that Trump has proposed this year. The plan supports Russian war aims and withdraws all U.S. support from Ukraine. This version was negotiated between U.S. and Russian representatives without Ukrainians present. It is being presented to Ukraine as a take-it-or-leave-it done deal. Among the provisions in its 28 points are:

Ukraine disarms. Its military forces are cut back to 600,000, or 40% of its current forces. Russian forces in the Russia-occupied territories of Ukraine have no limits.

Ukraine can have no foreign troops on Ukrainian land. Russia’s deployment of North Korean and foreign mercenary forces in Russian-occupied Ukrainian lands is not restricted.

Ukraine can receive no arms and military assistance from outside Ukraine. Russia’s continuing receipt of arms from Iran and North Korea and essential components for military equipment from China is not restricted.

Russia’s war of aggression is rewarded with recognition by Ukraine and the United States as Russian territory of lands taken by force, plus a bonus reward of 2,500 square miles of Donbas lands that are now under Ukrainian control. Unacknowledged in the “peace” plan is that this land transfer will put an additional 250,000 Ukrainians under Russian occupation on top of the more than 3 million Ukrainians already under Russia’s repressive rule in the currently occupied territories.

Russia gets amnesty for its war crimes, starting with the supreme war crime of aggression from which flows all other war crimes, as the Nuremberg Military Tribunal proclaimed in 1946 and became enshrined in international law, from the United Nations Charter of 1946 to the 1998 Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court. The International Criminal Court currently has arrest warrants out for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Children’s Rights Commissioner for the war crime of abducting of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia and for four top Russian military commanders for the war crimes of deliberately targeting bombs at civilians and civilian infrastructure far from the frontlines and for the detention, torture, rape, and execution of Ukrainian POWs and civilians loyal to Ukraine living in the occupied territories. The amnesty would cover the Russian FPV (First Person View) drone operators who conduct “human safaris” to murder Ukrainian civilians in cities and villages near the frontlines and boast about it in the snuff films they post in social media online.

Rather than saying “Russia will not invade neighboring countries,” the plan says “Russia is expected not to invade neighboring countries, and NATO will not expand further.” The so-called peace plan is full of such ambiguities and loopholes favorable to Russia.

“A dialogue between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States, will be held to address all security issues.” The supreme commander of NATO is American and the US is now allied with Russia. This “dialogue” would be one-sided with Ukraine excluded.

Sanctions on Russia will be lifted and the U.S. and Russian oligarchs will resume business with each other.

“US$100 billion of frozen Russian assets will be invested in U.S.-led efforts for Ukraine’s reconstruction and investment. The United States will receive 50% of the profits from this initiative.” It is all about the money with Trump, not social justice, human rights, or international law.

“A joint U.S.-Russia security working group will be established to facilitate and ensure implementation of all provisions of this agreement.” Ukraine is again excluded, as are its European allies.

“Ukraine will hold elections in 100 days.” This appeals to Russia’s rhetoric about “denazification,” i.e. regime change to a Russian puppet. Free and fair elections in Russia are not part of the deal.

No ceasefire until this final agreement is signed by Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine has been calling for a ceasefire to set the conditions for productive negotiations toward a sustainable peace settlement. Russia insists on a final settlement before a ceasefire. This peace plan affirms Russia’s position.

The agreement’s “implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by a Peace Council chaired by President Donald J. Trump.” This provision is like the Board of Peace chaired by Trump for his Gaza “peace” plan.

Trump’s 28-point plan for Ukraine is much like his 20-point plan for Gaza. Neither enforces international law, protects the victims, or holds the perpetrators of colonial aggression and occupation accountable. Both punish the victims and reward the aggressors. Both exclude the colonized from governance in the occupied territories. With their failure to exercise their veto when the UN Security Council adopted the Gaza foreign occupation plan, Russia and China became complicit in the colonial occupation of Gaza. Now Russia, its silent partner China, and the US are carving up Ukraine among themselves for imperialist plunder. Both deals have characteristically Trumpian pre-occupations with real estate development and business deals. Palestine is slated to be developed as a new Riviera for affluent foreign tourists, not indigenous Palestinians. Ukraine is slated to become a source of cheap and ultra-exploited labor, minerals and fossil fuels extraction, and fuels pipeline transit while the US and Russian oligarchs make money in Russia in, as the Trump plans says, “the spheres of energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, Arctic rare-earth mining projects, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities.”

The Ukraine Solidarity Network (USN) denounces this attempt to impose a settlement that is not acceptable to the Ukrainian people. USN continues to support the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination and to decide for themselves what are acceptable terms for a peace deal.

USN will continue to build moral, political, and material support for the people of Ukraine in their resistance to Russia’s invasion, to its occupation of Ukrainian lands, and to its brutal rule over people in the Russian-occupied territories. USN will continue to support Ukraine’s war of resistance, its right to determine the means and objectives of its own struggle, and its right to obtain the weapons it needs from any available source.

We demand the full and complete withdrawal of Russian troops from all of Ukraine.

We support the armed and unarmed resistance of Ukrainians against the Russian invasion.

We support economic sanctions against Russia’s war machinery, including its political, military, and economic elite, its access to the international financial system, its imports of weapons-related technology, and its exports of fossil fuels that fund and fuel Russia’s war machine.*

We demand that all Russians incarcerated for war resistance and political dissent be freed.

We demand that the tens of thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped to Russia and Belarus be returned to Ukraine.>/p>

We demand that the tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians from Russian-occupied territories incarcerated for opposition to the occupation be released and returned to Ukraine.

We support asylum in the United States for Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians, Palestinians, Sudanese, Haitians, Venezuelans, Afghans, and all people seeking refuge from political repression and war.

We oppose amnesty for Russian war criminals.

We demand the cancellation of all of Ukraine’s illegitimate and unjust foreign debts.

We demand the confiscation of Russian assets abroad to be used to support Ukraine’s military self-defense, social services, and post-war reconstruction.

We demand that Russia pay reparations to fund a full post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.

We oppose the U.S. policy of imposing a neoliberal economic agenda on Ukraine today and for its post-war reconstruction. The Ukrainians’ struggle for self-determination, democracy and social justice will continue. We support the political struggles of Ukrainian trade unions, women’s organizations, environmental initiatives, and progressive political organizations to reverse the neoliberal anti-labor and anti-social policies of the Ukrainian government, to expand social, labor, and democratic rights, to clean up public corruption, and to implement a just and ecological reconstruction of Ukraine.

We will continue to build material aid and public education campaigns linking trade unions, civic organizations, and progressive political organizations in the US with their counterparts in Ukraine.

We urge all opponents of imperialism to join us.

* The question of sanctions is complicated and controversial among activists committed to Ukraine’s struggle. It’s especially important in the US that we do not accommodate to the predatory politics of the imperialist US state. The Ukraine Solidarity Network will be discussing these issues as the betrayal of Ukraine unfolds in collaboration with our Ukrainian comrades whose lives and national freedom are on the line.

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