I listened to Macron. Emotionally, he even eclipsed Zelensky. He explained sensibly, though in my view too pompously, how wrong Trump is and why a "European plan" to end the war should replace his plan. I was impressed, but not moved.
No, I'm almost certain that the European peace plan will be magnificent in both spirit and style. It will be fundamental, like everything made in Europe, and will meet the highest standards of international law. It will have only one flaw – Putin is not ready to discuss it. Unfortunately, this small defect makes it meaningless.
The American plan evokes in me the same feelings I experienced when I read in the special archive of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences library the texts of the Brest Peace Treaty with additional agreements and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with secret protocols. Of course, things could be fixed if Putin were forced to accept a deeply considered and morally impeccable European plan (I have no doubt it will be exactly that) instead of the terrible American one. But to do this, something must be done, not just talk about needing to do something.
Europe could enter the war on Ukraine's side. It could convert its economies to wartime mode to flood Ukraine with weapons and not depend on the USA, which proposed such a terrible plan. It could organize a continental blockade of Russia and start arresting Russian tankers (after all, the continental blockade was Napoleon's idea, so why shouldn't Macron start with that instead of calling Trump). Finally, it could at least stop buying Russian oil itself, on which more is still spent than on aid to Ukraine.
But Europe doesn't want to do any of this. It wants Ukraine to fight heroically while Trump pressures Putin for himself and for that guy. Europe itself will support Ukraine morally and throw in some money (not much, and only until the right wins elections). You can't sell the "elephant" (European plan) this way. At a general shareholders' meeting, only shareholders vote. Either Europe buys shares in the "War" corporation in sufficient quantity to have a decisive vote, or its special opinion in the form of "the best peace plan" will not be recorded in the meeting minutes.
The only one who can stop "Trump's plan" in this case is Trump himself, and he will only do so if his plan causes rejection in America itself. But so far, nothing indicates this. Therefore, Europeans will have to bargain with Trump "inside" his plan, not "around" it. They can no longer push him toward an alternative version of their own making, no matter how wonderful it might be. I don't think "Trump's plan" is a meaningless leak of random fragments of Witkoff and Dmitriev's official correspondence that changes nothing. This is a "framework" within which further work is proposed. That's why it leaked, and quite timely, to move from the phase of imitating negotiations to the phase of active bargaining.
Trump is ready to bargain – it's his element in general. First, he has no other choice, because the American plan has entire blocks that are simply unrealizable without European consent. And second, the plan was compiled with a "margin" precisely for the case of bargaining. I don't think they'll agree by Thursday; rather, the game will transition into a long endgame. Europe will play for Ukraine and Zelensky for some time – from a month to six months.
Further events will indeed depend, as before, on the development of the situation at the front. In all scenarios except the miraculous one, when either the Armed Forces of Ukraine break the front or God breaks Putin, the second and this time real "Trump plan" will be harsher than the one presented now. This is a bit of gambling (roulette game) with blood. I think Zelensky knows what he's getting into, but this is truly his sovereign choice and the choice of the Ukrainian people, and they don't need "advice from an outsider."
