The US plan for ending Russia’s invasion is a remarkable document. It rewards aggression and punishes the victim. It undermines the most important principle of international law, which is that sovereign borders should not be changed by force. It suggests security guarantees, but fails to say how they would be enforced — and then limits the means by which they could be.

It amounts to the enforced capitulation of Ukraine for gain and profit, the blueprint for a modern Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in which one side’s interest in the division of Ukraine is territorial and the other’s commercial. It is, in a word, shameful.

And yet this should not be the decisive question, which is rather: Is this the best deal that Ukraine and its remaining European allies could hope at this point to achieve? The answer is no, and they’ve already rejected its key terms. But sadly, the question is also circular, because the answer depends almost entirely on Donald Trump.

First, the deal itself. On territory, Kyiv’s leadership and most Ukrainians have long since accepted that they will have to cede control of the lands Russia has occupied. Yet this agreement would do much more. It offers Russia international “de facto recognition” of virtually all Ukrainian territories occupied from 2014 to the day of signature, plus the so-called fortress belt of Donetsk that it has been unable to take. This area – critical to Ukraine’s further defense – would become a demilitarized zone.

De facto acceptance was what happened in East Germany and the Baltic States after World War II. NATO never contested Soviet control of these countries, but it also never recognized Soviet ownership or the German Democratic........

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