Trump proposes, Putin disposes: The story of 3 Ukraine peace proposals that failed to bring truce

Even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accepted a modified version of US President Donald Trump’s peace proposal to end the war, the almost four-year war may still continue to rage.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly rejected the peace proposal Zelenskyy agreed on along with European leaders in a huddle in Berlin earlier this week. The latest peace proposal looks on the course to meet the same fate as three previous Trump-endorsed ceasefire plans so far.

Trump floated these three ceasefire proposals in March, May, and July, and threatened Putin with costs for non-compliance. But those costs were never imposed.

As Firstpost’s Madhur Sharma previously reported that even as all of these proposals were unique, they met a similar end.

“First, Trump promises a ceasefire. Then, he floats offers favouring Russia and pressures Ukraine to accept those offers — Ukraine has accepted all three ceasefire offers so far. When Putin rejects those offers, Trump invokes sanctions. Then, he expresses shock when Putin ramps up attacks and pleads to Putin when attacks continue despite public pleadings. In the end, Trump does nothing and simply accepts Putin’s terms,” Firstpost outlined the pattern in earlier in this article.

There are concerns that ongoing talks could meet the same fate. Here are how previous three ceasefire proposals unravelled.

Energy and Black Sea ceasefires

In March, the White House announced it had reached separate agreements with Ukraine and Russia for 30-day ceasefires for Black Sea and energy infrastructure on land. But Russia left Trump red faced hours later as Putin rejected any such deal.

Hours after the White House’s announcement, the Kremlin rejected it, saying there would not be any ceasefire until sanctions on a Russian bank and a host of financial institutions and companies were lifted, and Russia’s access to the SWIFT payment system restored . Hours later, in the final confirmation of rejection, Russia launched an offensive on the Ukrainian port city of Mykolaiv.

The ceasefire proposal for sparing energy infrastructure could never be implemented. A month after the ceasefire was supposed to go into effect, Ukraine said that Russia carried out 30 attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the period.

Despite Putin’s rejection of ceasefires despite White House’s announcement, Trump did not impose any cost on Russia.

Call for immediate ceasefire

In May, Trump called for an immediate 30-day ceasefire that would lay groundwork for talks to end the war.

But then Trump held a long phone call with Putin and reversed course. He instead declared after the call that Ukraine and Russia would start direct talks in the coming days to end the war and dropped his own demand for a ceasefire.

Back then Firstpost noted at the time : “In endorsing Putin’s position, Trump dealt Ukraine and its European partners a major blow. He showed that his occasional displays of frustration with Putin in social media posts meant little and the two leaders remained on the same page.”

The Ukraine-Russia talks did not go anywhere and the Russia-Ukraine war dragged on.

Trump’s 50-day deadline

In July, Trump gave Putin a 50-day deadline to agree to a ceasefire.

While the deadline itself was problematic from the onset as it gave Russia a 50-day window to ramp up the war and gain as much land as possible, how it unravelled was even more damning for Ukraine.

When the deadline passed and Putin did not agree to any ceasefire, Trump took no punitive action despite his repeated threats of making Russia pay for defiance.

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Analysts noted that Trump’s acceptance of Putin’s defiance emboldened the Russian leader and was the clearest sign that Trump might not put any real pressure on Kremlin to halt the war if not end it.

Putin suggests he could reject latest proposal

In the clearest suggestion he could reject the proposal in the works, Putin on Wednesday said that any deal that did not completely include his maximalist demands would mean that Russia would “liberate its historical lands by military means”, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Putin has long rejected Ukraine’s nationhood and said the nation is a part of Russia and hence should be annexed.

Russia would only end the war off the battlefield if any agreement would address the “root causes of the conflict” on its terms, said Putin.

If such an agreement would not be reached, “the goals of the special military operation will be achieved unconditionally", said Putin.