Capitulation is not peace: Europe’s strategic failure and the coming collapse of deterrence

An air defense unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, known as drone hunters, illuminates the sky with a powerful searchlight at night at a position in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, March 24, 2024. Photo: Shutterstock

The nature of the plan and Ukraine’s impossible position

Donald Trump’s proposed 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine is not a peace plan at all. It is capitulation dressed up as diplomacy and a roadmap to Ukrainian defeat that grants Russia nearly everything it wants while demanding unilateral concessions from the victim. Nothing about this proposal creates stability. It simply rewards aggression, legitimizes territorial conquest, and dismantles Ukraine’s ability to defend itself in the future.

What is most revealing, however, is not the proposal itself, but what it exposes about the West. Much has been said and written in recent days on the 28-point “peace plan”, and this article will not seek to rehash those points. Rather, the goal is to underscore several serious, worrying trends: the erosion of the US-European security relationship; Europe’s stunning lack of strategic autonomy; and the extraordinary pressure now building on a Ukraine exhausted by years of war, internal political scandal, and an increasingly desperate civilian situation. Ukraine is more vulnerable than it has been since early 2022, and instead of reinforcing the country, Washington is nudging it toward surrender, with Europe nearly powerless to help.

For context, the US-Russia plan proposed last week is fundamentally disastrous for Ukraine as it forces Kyiv to give up large parts of its territory, abandon its NATO aspirations, accept a permanently limited military, and relinquish its legal claims against Russia — all while receiving no credible guarantees that Moscow will not invade again. The plan would recognize Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk as de facto Russian land and require Ukraine to withdraw even from areas Russia never managed to conquer, creating a demilitarized buffer zone internationally acknowledged as belonging to Moscow. It blocks Ukraine from joining NATO forever, caps its army at 600,000 troops, bans NATO forces from ever being stationed in the country, and replaces real security guarantees with vague promises no one can or will enforce.

Ukraine would be pressured to drop all claims for accountability or reparations for Russian atrocities, silencing victims and rewarding aggression. In exchange, Russia merely “agrees” not to invade neighbours – a meaningless assurance after 2014 and the Minsk treaties – and offers to let only 100 billion US dollars of its own frozen assets be used for reconstruction, something it has already condemned as theft. In sum, the plan dismantles Ukraine’s sovereignty, legitimizes Russia’s territorial conquest, strips Kyiv of long-term defence capacity, and traps the country in a position of permanent vulnerability to renewed Russian attack.

Ukrainian exhaustion, internal pressure, and western abdication

An interlocutor in Kyiv put it to me bluntly this week: “Things are worse than they have been since the invasion began. But Ukraine should not accept [this deal]. It is nothing but capitulation.” This sentiment, combining exhaustion and defiance, is widely shared across Ukrainian society, visible on Instagram and Telegram and among many with whom I have had contact.

Ukrainians desperately want peace more than anyone. But they do not want, and cannot afford, peace at any cost. They know better than anyone that Russia uses ceasefires to rebuild, rearm and strike again. They remember Bucha, Mariupol, Izium and Kherson. They remember filtration camps, deportations and torture chambers. A “peace” that cements Russian territorial gains, removes Ukraine’s deterrent capability, and leaves Kyiv exposed is not a peace worth having. It is simply the intermission before the next war: a war Ukraine would be unlikely to survive.

The bitter truth is that Ukraine is being pressured into a position no country should ever be forced into. This is not the result of Ukrainian strategic failure. It is the product of years of European strategic negligence and an American political system that no longer sees its own security tied to European stability. It is the predictable consequence of Europe spending years trying to keep the United States engaged in European defence while doing almost nothing to build its own. Sadly, on this, President Donald Trump was correct.

Europe now lacks the military, industrial and political weight to counter either Russian aggression or American coercion. It cannot supply Ukraine at scale; it cannot coordinate its own defence spending; and it cannot produce enough ammunition to sustain Ukraine’s war effort for more than a few weeks or months without American help. While Russia and China have understood this for years, now Washington has begun to understand it and is acting accordingly.

A Ukrainian military officer told me this week: “If Europe actually cared about Ukraine, we would not be in this position.” He is not wrong. The frontline is collapsing in multiple sectors because Ukraine does not have the drones, shells, missiles, long-strike capabilities, or manpower to hold. Europe could have prevented this outcome had it built real capacity over the past decade or at least taken the war in Ukraine seriously from 2022 on. Instead, it held conferences, wrote communiqués, and formed committees.

Security guarantees from Europe or North America mean very little to Ukrainians today. Everyone remembers Trump questioning NATO Article 5, both during his election campaign and since he has been in the White House. Everyone saw the US struggling to pass aid packages in 2024, and we see the effects of the US turning its back on Ukraine since Trump became president: a nearly tenfold increase in the number of Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and a faltering Ukrainian defence in almost every area. We all watch as Canada and much of Europe fail to meet even minimal NATO spending targets. Guarantees are easy to sign, but irrelevant if the guarantors lack the political will and military capacity to enforce them. And Ukrainians know, just as Moscow knows, that no western state will send its soldiers to die defending a Ukraine left disarmed by its own allies.

Only a strong, well-equipped Ukrainian military can deter the next Russian invasion. Not promises on paper. Not vague guarantees. Not “coalitions of the willing” that can barely supply shells. But instead of strengthening Ukraine’s military deterrent, the West is de facto pushing Kyiv toward accepting its dismantlement.

Compounding this pressure is the worsening domestic situation inside Ukraine. Rolling blackouts and heating shortages are now a daily reality. Over the past week, Kyivites had an average of three hours of electricity per 24-hour period. Winter has returned with full force, with little hope for immediate improvement. Critical infrastructure remains one of Russia’s primary targets, and the damage is beginning to accumulate in ways that affect not just morale but survival. Under such conditions, Ukrainians – ordinary civilians, the elderly, families separated for years – understandably want the war to end as soon as possible.

Some now openly wonder about peace. One Kyiv resident I spoke to in recent days explained, “I am starting to wonder if it is time for peace with Russia. But the points in this deal, they are unacceptable. They would only guarantee more suffering later.”

Layered on top of this is the damaging corruption scandal surrounding President Zelenskyy and members of his circle. Regardless of which allegations hold up, the scandal has weakened Kyiv at a time when it cannot afford to appear divided or compromised. Corrupt Ukrainian officials, stealing from Ukraine when the country is almost on its knees, are just as much to blame. As a result, Moscow and Washington see a Ukrainian government distracted and politically weakened, and are now manipulating that weakness to push for concessions they would never have achieved in 2023, 2024, or earlier this year, when Ukrainian battlefield successes made capitulation unthinkable.

The cost of inaction and an urgent call for European power

In the military, the debate is even more intense. Soldiers on collapsing fronts are torn between two impossible choices: continue fighting with insufficient resources or accept a “peace” that guarantees the next war will be harder, bloodier, and frankly, unwinnable. Every Ukrainian officer I speak to understands the stakes, and none believe this deal will bring real peace. But they also know the reality on the ground: they are being asked to hold the entire European security order together while their allies hesitate.

Europe must urgently understand that if Ukraine falls on the battlefield or at the negotiating table, then the continent becomes vastly less secure. Russia has demonstrated repeatedly that its strategic “red lines” are flexible to the point of parody. Each time the West hesitated, Russia threatened to escalate. Each time the West provided useful materiel for Ukraine (HIMARS, Storm Shadow, F-16s, ATACMS, etc.), Russia backed down. Moscow cannot afford a genuine escalation against NATO. Its nuclear threats are a tool of manipulation, not a reflection of real intent. Ukraine’s victories in 2022 and incursion into Kursk in 2024 demonstrated this quite clearly.

The only escalation that truly threatens Europe is Ukrainian defeat.

Drone incursions into Poland were not an anomaly, but a warning. If Russia is rewarded now, its appetite will grow. Hybrid operations, cyberattacks, sabotage, and pressure will increasingly target Moldova, the Baltics, Poland and Western Europe. Europe’s entire eastern frontier is at risk of destabilization. And the message to China could not be clearer: the post-1945 security architecture is dead. Force works. Alliances are unreliable. The strongest can do as they please. Taiwan will be the next test, and while it is far enough away from Europe to not warrant the same worries, the threat to international critical infrastructure, militaries, the internet, satellite communications, and everything else that depends on Taiwan’s semiconductor manufacturing capabilities is at stake. Beijing is clearly watching every hesitation, every concession, and every western fracture.

Europe and Canada must respond now. Not with statements, “task forces” or symbolic press conferences, but with weapons, production capacity, and real political will. Air defence systems must be transferred immediately. Ammunition production must move from “announced” to “delivered”. Drones must be produced in the hundreds of thousands. Long-range missiles must be supplied without caveats – including Taurus. Europe must also confront a reality it has tried for decades to avoid: the United States is no longer a dependable strategic ally. Whether through neglect or intentional abandonment, Washington is increasingly acting in ways that undermine European security rather than protect it. Europe needs to demonstrate to Russia, China, and even the United States that it can, and will, act on its own.

It is time for Europe to rearm. Not just symbolically, but at scale, and now. It must build real deterrent capacity. It must become strong enough not only to dissuade Russia and constrain China, but to withstand US unpredictability. Power respects power. And right now, Europe projects none.

If Europeans want a stable continent, a sovereign Ukraine, and a functioning rules-based order, the time to act was yesterday. The second-best time is today. Tomorrow may be too late. The crisis of the 28-point “peace plan” may pass, but Europe needs to understand today that these situations will only repeat themselves until it has credible, strategic deterrence.

What Moscow and Washington are selling as “peace” is nothing of the sort. It is simply surrender. And surrender now means catastrophe later — for Ukraine, for Europe, and for the world that still depends on the idea that borders cannot be changed by force, that alliances mean something, and that democracies defend their own.

Capitulation is not peace. It is the end of deterrence. And if Europe does not move now, it will pay the price for decades to come.

Joshua R. Kroeker is an independent researcher and founder of the boutique analytic firm Reaktion Group. He holds degrees from the University of British Columbia in Canada, Heidelberg University in Germany, and St Petersburg State University in Russia.

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Europe, peace, Russian invasion of Ukraine, transatlantic relations, Ukraine, West