How an End to the War in Ukraine Could be Achieved in Days, Not Months

President Trump's neocon advisors continue to misinform him into believing Putin doesn't want peace, Russia is losing the war and that a peace deal would take several months to negotiate.

President Donald J. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin enjoying a friendly and productive meeting together during his first term as president.

Editor’s Note: A shorter version of this article was originally published on WorldNetDaily.com on January 20th.

February 14th Update—I revised the terms of my proposed peace deal to provide greater security for all of the parties and to increase the likelihood that an agreement could be reached more quickly.

January 25th Update—President Trump is reportedly calling for a reduction of 20,000 US troops in Europe, the exact number I proposed in Article 8 of my peace proposal below. Trump is also demanding a subsidy from America’s European allies to help pay the costs for the remaining 80,000 US military personnel on the continent. I strongly commend him for both of these excellent moves.

For the last four years, it has felt as if America has been on suicide watch due to Biden’s disastrous and incredibly reckless attempts to provoke World War Three with Russia which is the mightiest nuclear superpower on Earth by far. Yesterday, Americans across the country joined together in unity to celebrate the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump following his electoral landslide victory. As Trump proclaimed during his Inaugural address, the 20^th day of January 2025 will forever be known as America's liberation day from the autocratic, warmongering Biden administration having ushered in a new and more hopeful era of peace and prosperity.

During his address President Trump nobly declared, “We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be, a peacemaker and a unifier.” He added, "our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent and totally unpredictable." The President then underscored his ongoing commitment to end America's forever wars. The American people delivered Trump a mandate to follow through on his pledge to bring the US back from the brink of an unthinkable and unnecessary world war with Russia stemming from President Joe Biden’s ever-escalating, disastrous proxy war in Ukraine which is now hovering perilously closer to defeat in their unwinnable war against Russia.

Ukraine’s only hope of preventing additional Russian territorial gains and preserving their independence is a negotiated peace settlement with Russia. However, the details as to exactly how the Trump administration intends to accomplish the President’s lofty goals in ending the war remain murky. Some portions of Special Envoy LTG Keith Kellogg’s peace proposal have already been rejected outright by the Russians as unacceptable including merely delaying, rather than nixing, Ukraine’s entry into NATO, sending thousands of NATO peacekeepers to Ukraine and arming Ukraine “to the teeth.” President Trump has been seriously misinformed by his neocon advisors to believe that ending the war in Ukraine will be complicated and arduous that will take at least six months because, they falsely claim, we don't know what terms would be acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine. It is very possible that a continued pursuit of the Kellogg peace plan by the Trump administration will become a self-fulfilling prophesy and prolong the war by several months unnecessarily costing the lives of tens of thousands more brave Ukrainians.

Putin Wants a Peace Deal But Zelensky Does Not

Russian President Putin congratulated President Trump following his inauguration and said that he welcomed and shared Trump’s stated desire to “do everything to prevent a Third World War.” Putin’s office added that Russia welcomes Trump’s proposal for negotiations with the US designed to end the war swiftly but that Trump administration officials had not yet contacted Moscow to initiate peace discussions. Following Russia’s comments welcoming his proposed peace negotiations, Trump stated that Zelensky wants to make a deal and that Putin is “destroying Russia by not making a deal” when in fact it is Ukraine that is being destroyed due to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s September 2022 decree banning all peace negotiations with Russia so long as Putin remains in power. Of course, the reason Zelensky opposes peace because with the war ended he would be forced to hold a democratic presidential election which he would be virtually guaranteed to lose to popular war hero Ukrainian General Zaluzhny.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader of a nation that is being destroyed by what he knows to be an unwinnable war against Russia, but who paradoxically has no desire to end it to save his country from further death and devastation, risking a full-scale Ukrainian military collapse that could see Russian tanks advancing all the way to the Dnipro River line.

Since the war began, Ukraine has lost nearly thirty percent of its Gross Domestic Product with half of its critical infrastructure destroyed including up to eighty percent of its electrical power grid with half of its businesses being forced to shut down. The World Economic Forum estimates the current cost of reconstruction would total $1 trillion which is a staggering figure considering that would take Ukraine nearly thirty years to pay off even if spent its entire pre-war (2021) government budget to pay for those costs but reconstruction cannot begin until a peaceful settlement ending the war has been finalized. The WEF also reported that, “Approximately 20% of the country’s farmland has been wrecked and 30% of land either littered with landmines or unexploded ordnance.” Ukraine’s unemployment rate is currently just above 18%.

The war in Ukraine has also resulted in other momentous changes as it has gone from the second largest country in Europe by territory to the fourth largest with the loss of one-fifth of its territory to Russian annexation and from the fifth most populous to the sixth with the loss of up to thirty-eight percent of its population over the past decade from over forty-five million to twenty-eight million due in large part to the exodus of Ukrainian refugees into Eastern Europe. By contrast, Russia’s population has increased from 146 million people to 151 million people following the annexation of most of four Ukrainian regions in September 2022. Whereas before the war, Russia’s population was only 3.5 times larger than Ukraine’s, it is now over five times larger.

Trump and various administration officials have met with Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders multiple times both before and after he was re-elected President but the President and his team have not spoken with Russian leaders for the past four years and have yet to engage in any diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the Ukraine conflict. Earlier today, Zelenksy showed how unserious he is about a potential peace deal when he stated Ukraine would need NATO send 200,000 peacekeepers as part of a security guarantee to reach a peace agreement with Russia. He previously said he could accept a cease-fire in exchange for Ukrainian NATO membership. Both proposals are entirely unacceptable to Russia, given it was the presence of NATO troops and Western bases inside Ukraine that caused Russia to invade in the first place and are likely non-starters with the new Trump administration.

Trump also stated at the press conference last night that Russia has lost a million soldiers killed in action. In fact, Russia’s casualties have been about ten times less totaling around 250,000 including 85,000 to 100,000 dead due to Russia’s supremacy over Ukraine in terms of combat drones, artillery, aircraft and missiles. These statements strongly suggest that the President’s neocon advisors have been misinforming him both as to Russia’s actual stance on negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine as well as the fact that Russia is clearly winning, not losing, the war in Ukraine. The danger is that if Trump is operating under the misconception that Russia is losing the war than he may make the mistake of trying to insist Russia agree to peace terms that are unacceptable to them when the Kremlin is in the driver’s seat and is able to continue fighting the war indefinitely until the US agrees to terms which are minimally acceptable to Russia. This would serve to prolong the risk of the outbreak of World War Three with the US and its NATO allies, which Trump has stated repeatedly is his primary focus to prevent.

How can America’s visionary, peace-loving President be expected to achieve his noble goal of ending the war, when he is being fed such blatant misinformation from one or more of his top national security advisors? Ultimately, the chances of the Kellogg peace plan succeeding in forging a peace agreement to formally end the war in Ukraine are virtually zero because it provides no incentives for Zelensky to agree to one. It only incentivizes Zelensky to accept a cease-fire and come to the negotiating table by threatening to suspend Ukrainian aid if Russia accepts a cease-fire and Ukraine does not. In fact, shortly after his inauguration, Trump suspended all foreign aid, excepting military aid to Ukraine, for a period of ninety days in a move likely at least partially aimed at pressuring Kyiv to accept a cease-fire.

To ensure a reasonable chance a peace deal can be agreed to quickly, the US should negotiate it directly with Russia without Ukraine because while Putin has been “salivating for peace” in the words of one US diplomat since March 2022, Zelensky has outlawed all peace negotiations with Moscow. Accordingly, it’s not Russia but Ukraine that must be pressured by the US to accept a peace deal. Just as Trump masterfully pressured Israel which had been the party that was most resistant to accepting a cease-fire in Gaza to deliver a huge victory to him before he had even taken office, Trump should apply the same winning formula to Ukraine. This would entail the US suspending all aid to Ukraine apart from humanitarian assistance until Ukraine has signed a final peace agreement negotiated between the US and Russia to end the war, not merely a temporary cease-fire or armistice agreement.

The most expeditious way for President Trump to obtain a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine would be for him to replace LTG Kellogg as Special Envoy to Russia and Ukraine with Vice President JD Vance so he could lead peace negotiations with Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. Vance should meet with Mishustin in Istanbul as soon as possible for as long as it takes, likely a week at most, to hammer out a final peace agreement. Then, Trump and Putin could meet and sign it after which the US could present it to Ukraine for signature and then, after they agreed to it, resume Ukrainian aid. Alternatively, he could appoint a foreign party realist such as Director of National Intelligence-designate Tulsi Gabbard, Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department-designate Michael Anton, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) or Under Secretary of Defense-designate Elbridge Colby to lead US peace negotiations with Russia. Any of them would be far better than Kellogg whose views likely have much more in common with former Vice President and arch-Never Trumper Mike Pence than the President on Russia and Ukraine.

Trump Officials’ Mistaken Belief that US Needs to Threaten Russia to Force it to Accept a Cease-Fire

Trump national security officials like National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and LTG Kellogg have repeatedly talked about the need for the US to increase its leverage to use to pressure Russia to accept a peace deal acceptable to Ukraine. Initially, Kellogg said he supported suspending arms shipments to Ukraine to pressure them to accept a cease-fire but in the last few weeks he has said he supported Biden’s decision to send Ukraine $2.4 billion in additional arms and supports the Trump administration continuing to arm Ukraine to increase the administration’s leverage with Russia. Last month, Kellogg praised Biden’s decision to authorize Ukraine’s use of US ATACMs missiles to use in deep strikes against Russia saying it would increase Trump’s leverage with the Russians while Waltz has urged Ukraine to force mobilize all its young men ages 18-25 to pressure Russia to agree to end the war. Kellogg seems to be advocating the adoption of a maximum pressure strategy against Russia to get them to come to the negotiating table. However, the US has little else it can use to threaten Russia with because we have already maxed out the economic sanctions we can impose on them, increasing tariffs would be useless as bilateral trade has been reduced to a trickle of perhaps $350 million a year and we have few if any weapons left to send to Ukraine.

President Trump with his Special Envoy for Russia and Ukraine, LTG Keith Kellogg (USA Ret.) whose peace plan to end the war in Ukraine has little to no prospects of success aside from a temporary cease-fire.

The only thing the administration can offer the Russians to get them to agree to a cease-fire such as the lifting of most economic sanctions and the restoration of all Russian financial assets confiscated by the West. Kellogg has rightly stated that the US should lift most of its economic sanctions on Russia as soon as a cease-fire has been implemented conditioned upon Russia continuing to abide by its terms. The restoration of low-cost Russian natural gas shipments would be particularly beneficial for the West to help end the recession being experienced by many NATO member states should be an important element of any peace deal.

Of course, the US doesn’t need to use any negative leverage or threats against Russia to sign a peace deal because it has so much positive leverage to incentivize Russia to agree to one. If the US were willing to address and mitigate the causes of the conflict in an agreement as Putin has requested a peace deal could be agreed to very quickly. Some of the positive leverage the US has available include economic sanctions relief and a mutual security agreement including no NATO eastward expansion, mutual non-interference in the affairs of adjacent border states, 200-mile buffer zones for opposing nuclear forces and a redeployment of opposing non-strategic nuclear forces. The US could also offer Russia a modern-day Reinsurance Treaty in which both sides pledge not to go to war against each other in the event they are attacked by a third party, a non-aggression pact and a joint withdrawal of US and Russian troops from Eastern Europe amounting to an updated Conventional Forces in Europe agreement.

Ultimately, however, the US does not need to attempt to obtain increased leverage over Russia to accomplish what Putin has been trying to accomplish within days after the war began, which is a negotiated compromise peace settlement permanently ending the conflict in Ukraine. There is nothing needed to induce Russia to come to the peace table given it never left, and Putin has declared his openness and desire for peace negotiations from the day after the war began. That said, Russia may condition any cease-fire agreement on the US providing a written guarantee that Ukraine will never join NATO, acceptance of continued Russian de-facto control over its annexed territories and limitations on the size and capabilities of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Both former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have conceded that Russia could keep control of all its annexed territory under a peace settlement provided Ukraine be allowed to remain a Western client state. Also, the Biden administration has privately opposed Ukrainian NATO membership from the time Biden took office and informed Zelensky that Ukraine would not be joining NATO in the foreseeable future. Accordingly, Ukraine NATO membership should be taken off the table by President Trump in advance of a cease-fire. If not, Kellogg’s alarmingly dangerous recommendation to massively increase US military aid to Ukraine if Russia refuses a cease-fire could bring the US even closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than we were during the Biden administration.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, the path to peace with Russia is surprisingly straightforward and simple and a “win-win” agreement ending the war could be achieved inside a week coming close to achieving the President’s long-stated objective to end the war within twenty-four hours of his inauguration. Here are the specific terms that Trump should include in any peace agreement that should be minimally acceptable to both Russia and Ukraine and are most likely to get us to a final peace agreement as expeditiously as possible.

Proposed Terms for a Russo-Ukrainian Peace Treaty

1. All hostilities between the parties to the conflict will cease effective immediately. Ukraine pledges to amend its constitution back to its pre-2019 status to enshrine its permanent neutrality as well as to prohibit the presence of foreign troops and bases on its territory while removing its commitment to become a NATO member. Ukraine may retain all its bilateral security guarantees it has received previously and can join the European Union.

2. Ukraine shall withdraw all its troops from Kursk oblast, recognize Russian control of Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts along the current lines of control, as well as Crimea, and renounce any attempt to retake them by military force, pending a final determination of their status by 2040. Furthermore, all Ukrainian military forces, excepting Border Guard units, shall be withdrawn from the constitutional borders of the four oblasts. In return, Russia shall renounce all claims on the Ukrainian-controlled portions of these oblasts and shall withdraw all its troops from Kharkiv and Mykolaiv oblasts while guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

3. A four-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone, policed by an international force of no more than 15,000 unarmed United Nations Military Observers from states belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement led by India, shall be created along the entire length of Ukraine’s border with the four Russian-controlled oblasts to prevent future conflict. All prisoners of war shall be returned to their home countries and all refugees including forcibly displaced persons shall have the right to return to their homes. There will be no war crimes prosecutions or reparations. Ukrainian reconstruction assistance shall be provided by the European Union as well as from the proceeds of Western tariffs on Russian gas exports.

4. In exchange for Ukraine accepting Russia’s proposed limits on the size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including National Guard, of 100,000 personnel, as outlined in the final April 15, 2022 draft of the Istanbul Agreement, Russia agrees to an expansion in the size of Ukraine’s Border Guard to 150,000 personnel. Border Guard units shall not be equipped with tanks or “strike systems,” except for drones. The total number of Ukrainian soldiers, airmen and sailors, including Border Guard and reservists, shall not exceed one million. In return, Russia agrees to limit the number of its troops in former Ukrainian-controlled territories to 250,000.

5. Ukraine agrees to Russia’s proposed limits on the quantity and ranges of its offensive "strike systems" systems’ outlined in the April 15, 2022 version of the Istanbul agreement including howitzers, heavy mortars, multiple rocket launch systems, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, combat aircraft, warships and medium to long-range combat drones as well as air defense missile systems. In addition, the maximum range of Ukraine’s combat drones shall not exceed forty kilometers. All weapon systems exceeding these limits will be returned to their nations of origin, sold or destroyed. In exchange, Russia agrees to Ukraine’s proposed quantity limits on primarily defensive weapon systems including tanks, armored vehicles, anti-tank guns, ATGMs, auxiliary aircraft, reconnaissance drones, auxiliary vessels, MANPADS and anti-aircraft artillery. Ukraine further commits to refrain from producing or possessing weapons of mass destruction and to close all foreign biological labs.

6. Full diplomatic relations between Russia and Ukraine will be restored and all bilateral sanctions rescinded. All public and private Russian financial and economic assets seized by Ukraine, or for which it was the recipient, shall be fully restored to their Russian owners. Russia and Ukraine agree to renew the 1997 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, committing each party not to use its territory to harm the security of the other and further their shared goal of peaceful co-existence.

7. The March 2022 decree banning eleven Ukrainian political parties shall be lifted. Ukraine shall hold presidential and parliamentary elections within four months of the signing of this treaty. All far-right, ultra-nationalist political parties shall be banned from participation in the Ukrainian government and all far-right, ultra-nationalist militia groups shall be disbanded. The Russian language shall be restored as one of the two official languages of Ukraine with equal status to the Ukrainian language. The rights of Ukraine’s Russian minority population as well as the rights of Ukraine’s Orthodox Christian church members shall be guaranteed by law.

US-Russia Strategic Framework Agreement

1. The U.S. guarantees that NATO will never expand eastward. All U.S. economic sanctions against Russia enacted from 2014 onward shall be rescinded and the US will encourage its allies to do the same. All seized public and private Russian financial and economic assets shall be fully restored to their Russian owners. In addition, the US will encourage its allies not to recognize or attempt to enforce the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against the President of the Russian Federation.

2. In return for a withdrawal of all Russian troops from Belarus and a reduction of Russian troops in its recently annexed territories to 250,000, all 20,000 U.S. troops shall be withdrawn from those nations in Europe that were not part of NATO prior to 1999 and the overall number of U.S. troops in Europe shall be reduced to their 2021 level. The U.S. will encourage its western European allies and Canada to withdraw their troops from those nations as well. The U.S. and Russia shall refrain from flying heavy bombers or deploying major surface combatants within two-hundred miles of the other’s territory, except for the Bering Strait.

3. In exchange for Russia removing all its air and land-based nuclear weapons from Kaliningrad, Belarus and all territories previously controlled by Ukraine, the U.S. will redeploy all one hundred and fifty of its B-61 nuclear gravity bombs from Western Europe to its aircraft carriers in the Western Pacific. The U.S. and Russia agree to begin negotiating a New START II Treaty with a limit of 3,500 operational strategic nuclear weapons.

4. In return for Russia committing not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere or in NATO member states, the U.S. commits to a policy of non-interference in all former Soviet republics which are not NATO members. The U.S. and Russia solemnly pledge that neither side will go to war against the other in the event they are attacked by a third party.

Given that Turkey is a NATO member on friendly terms with Russia, Istanbul should again serve as the venue to host the international peace accords to negotiate a diplomatic compromise agreement ending the war in Ukraine as it was in March 2022. This agreement could be divided into a bilateral peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine and a legally binding strategic framework agreement or accord between the US and Russia, outlining all the commitments specifically relating to the US and Russia. Due to the fact that the strategic framework agreement would not constitute a formal treaty, the Trump administration could credibly argue it would not require ratification by the US Senate, preventing it from being able to reject the agreement.

The size of the Ukrainian armed forces and the number of its major weapon systems and ranges will undoubtedly again be one of the main sticking points for the US just as it was with the Istanbul agreement. The Kellogg plan fails to account for Russia’s demand that any peace agreement include any provisions for Ukrainian disarmament and instead calls for the US massively expanding Ukraine’s military power after a peace deal is realized to deter potential future Russian aggression. Accordingly, it will be important to map out a compromise arrangement along the lines of Article Five above recognizing that Russia’s main concerns have to do with limiting the quantity and ranges of Ukrainian offensive “strike systems” rather than shorter-range, defensive weapon systems on which they could prove more flexible.

Implementing this agreement would prevent a single additional square inch of Ukrainian territory from falling under Russia control, allow the long and arduous process of Ukrainian reconstruction to begin, and permit all 10.8 million Ukrainian refugees to return to their homes. Under its terms, the Ukrainian armed forces would remain one of the largest in Europe, with nearly a million men and four to five times more tanks than the UK Royal Army. The administration could credibly point to a peace deal guaranteeing Ukrainian security and independence in which Russia withdrew all its troops from Kharkiv and Mykolaiv oblasts, renounced all claims on additional Ukrainian territory, and agreed to many Ukrainian-requested limitations on its number of troops and weapons as a major victory.

US Leaders Need to Understand Why Russia Invaded Ukraine

In his remarks yesterday, Putin stated that the most important element of any peace formula ending the war in Ukraine was for the underlying reasons for the conflict to be addressed. Those concerns are addressed in Article One of the peace proposal above. US national security experts, notably including Kellogg himself, have shown a profound misunderstanding of Russia’s actual reasons for invading Ukraine. For the US to have any reasonable prospect of ending the war with a negotiated peace agreement, it is imperative that US leaders clearly understand that it was the threat of NATO expansion into Ukraine to Russia’s legitimate security interest causing it to invade. On January 7^th, Donald J. Trump demonstrated his clear understanding of the origins of the war in Ukraine by appearing to concede that Russia's decision to enforce its own version of the Monroe Doctrine by attempting to reduce the number of hostile states along its borders was understandable.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators meet in Istanbul in March 2022 to sign an agreement that had it been implemented would have mandated the withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine’s pre-war controlled territory in what would have been a stunning victory for Ukraine a mere five weeks after the war began saving hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian lives.

As demonstrated by the Istanbul Agreement which mandated a full Russian military withdrawal from all Ukraine’s pre-war controlled territory as well as Putin’s decision to unilaterally withdraw Russian troops from all northern Ukraine including Kyiv oblast in April 2022, Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine was never about conquering it or retaking control of lost territory. Rather, it has always been to determine the geopolitical orientation of Ukraine and restore its pre-February 2014 Maidan coup status as a neutral buffer state separating Russia from NATO.

Russia invaded Ukraine following the signing of two strategic partnership agreements between the US and Ukraine in August and November 2021 which effectively transformed Ukraine into a de-facto NATO member state. The US responded to Russia’s attempt to rollback NATO’s successful de facto expansion into Ukraine exactly as we would imagine it would have had it been a formal NATO member state with a blank check of US military and financial assistance to repel the invaders. The US reaction seemed to confirm the perceived necessity for the invasion in the minds of Russian leaders following fifteen years of failed diplomatic efforts by Moscow to resolve the Ukraine in NATO crisis.

The reason Russia views Ukraine remaining as a de-facto NATO member state as an existential threat is not because it fears a NATO invasion of Russia but rather because the stationing of US nuclear bombers and missiles in Ukraine a mere 300 miles from Moscow could reduce their warning time of an impending nuclear strike to as little as five to ten minutes. According, Russia's primary rationale in staging its limited invasion of Ukraine was to re-establish Ukraine as a nuclear-free buffer zone against a potential US nuclear decapitation first strike on Moscow. I strongly suspect that if the US gave nuclear capable aircraft and missiles to a hypothetical Russian-satellite state in Canada 350 miles from DC, we would react the same way. The only way the US can address Russia’s fear in this regard is with a peace deal permanently keeping Ukraine out of NATO and expelling all western troops and bases from its territory.

While Ukraine enjoyed true security and control over all its internationally recognized territory when it was a neutral state along the Cold War-era Finnish model from 1991-2014, it has lost over one-third of its population, one-fifth of its territory and is now on the verge of becoming a failed state since it began pursuing NATO membership. Given the West's demonstrated refusal to defend Ukraine militarily from Russian aggression, Ukraine must realize that its security is primarily conditioned upon it agreeing to a peace deal on terms minimally acceptable to Moscow. Recent history has proven that maintaining friendly relations with Russia is far more critical to Ukraine’s security, and indeed its very survival as a nation, than any tenuous security guarantees it has received from the West, which at best would commit the US and NATO to continue arms shipments rather than commit any troops to defend it.

Russia invaded with a small force of only 190,000 troops, which was woefully inadequate for the US claimed Russian objective of invading and conquering all of Ukraine, but sufficient for Russia’s limited objectives in a war which Putin intended to last only a few weeks before they were withdrawn. Russian forces succeeded in partially surrounding Kyiv within seventy-two hours of invading, forcing Zelensky to the bargaining table. On April 1^st, 2022, Putin ordered all Russian troops unilaterally withdrawn from Kyiv and the rest of northern Ukraine after Ukraine initialed the Istanbul Agreement in which Russia agreed to withdraw all its troops from Ukraine’s prewar controlled territory in advance of a signing ceremony that was due to take place on April 9^th before Zelensky cancelled it.

Even though Russia’s military forces currently outnumber Ukraine’s by two to one, Putin has let pass multiple opportunities to stage a general Russian offensive to retake control of northern Ukraine including much of Kyiv oblast. At any point during the past couple of years or so, Russia could have overrun much of northern and eastern Ukraine after Zelensky reneged on his previous commitment to sign and implement the Istanbul Agreement, the terms of which were quite favorable to Ukraine again demonstrating that territorial conquest was never a primary Russian military objective.

Biden’s Proxy War in Ukraine Has Made Russia Stronger, Not Weaker

Contrary to popular Western misconceptions, the war in Ukraine has not been weakening Russia but has rather been strengthening Russia both economically and militarily. Since the war began, Russia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has increased from the 6^th largest to the 4^th largest in the world. Before Biden provoked Russia to invade Ukraine, Russia was not perceived to be much of a threat to Europe. However, Russia has since expanded the size of its armed forces by fifty percent to Soviet-era levels, tripled the size of its army, more than doubled the percentage of its GDP it spends on its military, again to Soviet-era levels, and expanded its arms and munitions production so that it outproduces all of NATO combined in some areas. In short, the war and the West’s response to it has had the effect of making Russia great again.

Russian tank factories are reportedly engaging in mass production of an astounding 1,500 T-90M tanks a year as Russia ramps up for a possible direct war with the NATO alliance.

A prevalent talking point in neocon circles is that Russia is a declining military superpower but the truth is that both Russia and China are ascendant military superpowers whose overall military power very likely exceeds our own. Indeed, Putin recently directed an expansion of the size of its armed forces to be larger than the US military for the first time since the end of the Cold War. For the first time in twenty years, Russia’s President has signed an order conscripting Russian citizens into the reserves in preparation for a potential direct war with NATO. Russia reportedly has an astonishing total of 18-25 million military age men which could be mobilized for war. The Russians appear to be acting under the assumption that President Trump will end up following Biden’s lead in continuing to fight NATO’s proxy war against Russia for many years to come. The grim reality it is the US, not Russia or China, that has been a declining power under the Biden administration. While President Trump is working furiously to reverse all the damage that Biden has done to America’s relative military power vis a vis the Sino-Russian alliance, it will likely take several months, if not more than a year, to fully reverse America’s downward trajectory.

After the US and Ukraine refused to make peace in 2022, Russia’s objective morphed into “wrecking Ukraine” in the words of Dr. John Mearsheimer and destroying its military bases and critical infrastructure to prevent NATO from using Ukraine as a forward operating base from which to pose what they consider an existential threat to Russia. Even more importantly, Russia has aimed to “demilitarize” Ukraine by destroying its military forces. Ukraine has been suffering an average of 1,000 casualties including 400 combat deaths, a day, totaling over one million Ukrainian military casualties to date, including approximately 425,000 troops killed in action, reducing the size of Ukraine’s military from 1.2 million two years ago to just 350,000 today. Russian officials have boasted they are succeeding not only in demilitarizing Ukraine, but NATO as well given the fact that the US and its NATO allies have shipped Ukraine large quantities of advanced weapon systems, leaving their own militaries more ill-prepared than ever to fight a great power war. Russian leaders are also well aware that NATO accession rules prevent it from accepting a country as a NATO member with disputed borders or foreign troops deployed on its territory.

Of course, there is little need for NATO to balance against Russia because it has no territorial designs against Europe and desires peace with the West much more than most European NATO leaders want peace with Russia. From the Russian perspective, the war in Ukraine was a strategic defensive operation designed to rollback what they perceive to be the existential threat from NATO expansion to themselves. However, it makes sense from a realist foreign policy perspective that NATO should continue to exist under European leadership with a European Supreme Allied Commander and with much reduced US military involvement including a withdrawal of all US ground troops from Europe.

The Path to a Just and Lasting Peace

As noted above, the primary region for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was to reverse NATO’s de-facto expansion into Ukraine which occurred in 2021 with the signing of two strategic partnership agreements and to negotiate mutual security agreements with the US and NATO along the lines of its December 2021 proposals. Trump actually campaigned on forging a similar grand bargain with Russia. This would realize Russia’s 36-year long objective of bringing itself into the economic and security architecture of Europe and permanently ending all hostilities with the West. Those objectives are not in the least bit incompatible with Trump’s vision of a new, forward-looking, transformational, America First foreign policy that reorients the US from Europe and the Middle East to great power competition with the People’s Republic of China in the Western Pacific. In fact, Trump campaigned on forging a comprehensive peace agreement with Russia in 2016.

President Trump is the only US president in the past thirty-two years to understand that the key to enhancing America’s national security is in seeking out better relations with Russia and China utilizing a prudent mix of diplomacy and deterrence in furtherance of US national security interests. He should follow Nixon’s sage advice in seeking peaceful accommodations with Russia and China which satisfy the vital interests of all three nuclear superpowers and serve to increase international peace and stability while making no concessions to them without receiving reciprocal concessions in return. The objective of our diplomatic understandings with Moscow and Beijing should be to increase the security of all parties and to remove any provocations or incentives they have to attack us just as President Ronald Reagan did with the Soviets in furtherance of his policy of peace through strength.

While speaking with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at a rally just days after his re-election, Trump demonstrated his clear understanding of the existential threat to America posed by the Sino-Russian alliance, which Biden’s war in Ukraine has caused to become ever closer, and his determination to do whatever is necessary to break it apart. "The one thing you never want to happen is you never want Russia and China uniting,” he said. “I'm going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that, too. I have to un-unite them."

Accordingly, President Trump should utilize such a comprehensive peace deal to restore a more favorable balance of power for the US that would neutralize the Sino-Russian military alliance with a new Russo-American entente. It should also establish a new security architecture that benefits all European nations under the principle of “indivisible security” with the aim of providing security to all parties instead of promoting needless conflict with Russia by continued NATO imperial expansion.

Once implemented, this peace agreement could secure President Trump’s legacy as one of the greatest transformational peace presidents in American history. He might even be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, not just for ending the war in Ukraine and saving the U.S. and Europe from a full-scale war with Russia that could cost the lives of tens of millions of our citizens, but for creating the conditions necessary to forge an enduring peace, for which future generations would be deeply grateful.

© David T. Pyne 2025

David T. Pyne, Esq. is a former U.S. Army combat arms and Headquarters staff officer, who was in charge of armaments cooperation with the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas from 2000-2003, with an M.A. in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He is the former President and current Deputy Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He also serves as a member of the Committee on the Present Danger-China. He recently served as Defense and Foreign Policy Advisor to former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. He has also co-authored the best-selling new book, “Catastrophe Now--America’s Last Chance to Avoid an EMP Disaster” and his new book “Restoring Strategic Deterrence” will be published in March or April 2024. He serves as the Editor of “The Real War” newsletter at dpyne.substack.com and previously served as a contributor to “The National Interest”. Here is a link to his interview archive. He may be reached at emptaskforce.ut@gmail.com.

Recent Interviews

December 2nd—Interview with COL Rob Manass on the Rob Manass show to discuss Russia’s decision to begin using ICBMs to attack Ukraine to restore deterrence with Ukraine and NATO and show he is willing to escalate the war to the nuclear level if the West does not agree to a negotiated diplomatic settlement of the conflict. Here is the link to the interview.

December 3rd—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss Russia’s super stealthy Kilo II class submarine Ufa which Russia’s Tass News Agency reports carries a nuclear missile with a 12,000 KM range. We will also discuss the Biden administration’s attempts to stir up trouble for Russia in Syria by supporting Al Queda rebels and in Georgia by supporting violent protests against the government. Here is a link to the interview.

December 5th—Panel Discussion with Scott Ritter on RT International’s Crosstalk program to discuss the prospects for peace in Ukraine after Trump becomes President. Here is the link to the interview.

December 5th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the just released House Intelligence Committee report detailing the US intelligence committees attempt to cover up Russia’s use of microwave Americans to target US military personnel, US intelligence personnel and embassy officials with microwave weapons since 2016. Here is a link to the interview.

December 10th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the fall of Syria to the HTS jihadist forces led by a former Al Queda and ISIS terrorist leader as well as China’s massive Joint Air-Naval Blockade exercises surrounding Taiwan, reported to be the largest such exercises in the past three decades. Here is the link to the interview.

December 17th—Interview on Main Street Radio with Jon Twitchell to discuss my latest article on the myths of World War Two and why it was an unnecessary war as well as Biden’s attempts to get the US into World War Three with Russia before Trump takes office. Here is a link to the interview.

December 20th—Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the report that Biden has more than doubled the number of US troops in Syria, China’s ongoing efforts to penetrate US cyber networks in preparation for war with us and the latest revelations that Biden has been a figurehead President over the past four years with a cabal of his senior cabinet officials setting policy in his absence. Here is the link to the interview.

January 20th-Interview with Brannon Howse on Brannon Howse Live to discuss the impact of President Trump’s inauguration on US national security policy including the war in Ukraine, Gaza and what I see as China’s plan to blockade Taiwan later this year. Here is the link to the interview.

January 21st—Interview on Main Street Radio with Jon Twitchell discussing a host of issues including the Biden crime family pardons, President Trump's inauguration and executive orders, and my proposal to enable the US to exert greater influence over Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. I will also discuss my new peace plan and the prospects for Trump achieve a permanent peace deal ending the war in Ukraine. Here is a link to the interview.