Let’s stop dressing this up. The “28-Point Peace Plan” isn’t a negotiation. It’s an exit strategy. And for Ukraine, it looks suspiciously like surrender in a shiny binder.

Read the terms: hand over the Donbas, hand over Crimea, freeze your army, swear off NATO for good. It’s everything Putin wanted back in 2022 when he thought Kyiv would fall in three days.

The part that keeps looping in my brain isn’t the content. It’s the timing.

Why now?

Why this administration, this month, and this bizarre “Thanksgiving or bust” ultimatum?

Once you trace the timing, it becomes painfully clear: the plan isn’t shaped by the war. It’s shaped by Washington’s calendar.

1. The Economic Cliff: November 21

The first domino is unglamorous but massive. The US Treasury’s wind-down license for sanctions on Russia’s oil majors quietly expired on November 21. Until this week, Washington held a loaded gun: the ability to vaporise Moscow’s oil revenues overnight.

That leverage peaks once.

The White House wants to cash it in before the Russians engineer their usual back-channel workarounds.

In short: sign the deal now, or lose the only pressure point that actually scares the Kremlin.

2. The Political Deadline: Midterms Incoming

The administration is drowning in bad polling and bored voters. A war with no visible progress is political kryptonite.

A “peace deal” - even one held together by duct tape and magical thinking - lets the President go into the 2026 midterms claiming to have “ended the conflict” and “stopped the spending haemorrhage.” It doesn’t matter that the deal’s foundations are made of wet cardboard; it’s a headline.

Washington has chosen optics over outcomes. Stability takes too long. Peace - however misspelled - is better for campaigning.

3. The Pentagon Pivot: Asia First

This is the real engine under the floorboards.

The US can’t sustain a grinding European land war and prepare for a potential showdown with China. The Indo-Pacific is eating every defence briefing and every budget line.

To put it bluntly: Ukraine is being deprioritised so the US can hoard ammunition and focus on Taiwan.

Washington is trading slices of the Donbas for breathing space in the Pacific.

That’s the strategic maths. There’s no romance in it.

The Peace Trap

The problem is that this plan isn’t a peace framework - it’s a shrink-wrap.

Instead of reintegrating territory (as the Minsk Accords at least pretended to attempt), this plan simply amputates the affected regions.

Then it caps Ukraine’s military at 600,000 troops and blocks foreign bases. That’s not a defensive structure. It’s a velvet-lined demilitarisation.

We’re not creating security. We’re creating a vacuum.

And vacuums attract people with flags.

The Bigger Picture

This deal broadcasts something dangerous: if you push long enough, the West blinks.

It’s a strategic gift basket for the CRINK axis - China, Russia, Iran, North Korea - who now have a case study in patience as a weapon.

Maybe the shelling stops by Thanksgiving. Maybe the front line freezes.

But we’re not heading into peace.

We’re heading into a global reshuffle where one theatre goes cold so another can heat up.

This isn’t the end of the conflict.

It’s the end of the illusion that total victory was ever the plan.