President Trump’s Ukraine “peace plan” is a capitulation to Russia that must wake European leaders up to the reality that we cannot rely on the US, and must write our own destiny, writes Herald columnist Mark McGeoghegan.

The time has come for European leaders to fully accept that the current US administration and the political and, crucially, business instincts of President Trump are incompatible with the just and lasting peace they seek for Ukraine. As valiant and, at times, successful as their efforts have been this year to bring President Trump’s position closer to Ukraine’s, the reality is that the fruits of those efforts have been and will always be temporary.

The 28-point ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine, agreed between the President’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and his Russian counterparts, and leaked last week, lays bare this reality. It is, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio put it (though the US State Department denies this), a “Russian wish list.” It’s a recipe to freeze the conflict on advantageous terms for Russia and for the US to extract profits from the rebuilding of Ukraine while Russia re-arms and Ukraine is forcibly demilitarised.

The plan concedes to Russia’s worldview throughout, peaking with the provision that “all Nazi ideology and activities must be rejected and prohibited.” Out of context, I’m sure most of us would agree with that, except the Russians view practically the entirety of Ukraine’s political elite as ‘nazis’, so what would the implementation of that provision mean in reality?

The plan is even more baldly in........

© Herald Scotland