12 hours agoShareSavePaul KirbyEurope digital editorShareSaveMarharyta Fal/Frontliner/Getty ImagesThe draft US-Russia peace plan has been widely leaked and we now know that it proposes to hand over those areas of Ukraine’s industrial eastern Donbas region still under Ukrainian control to the de facto control of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.Latest versions of the text also call for Ukraine to cut the size of its armed forces to 600,000 people.But what else is known about the text and who stands to benefit from it most?What are the key points?There are 28 key points and there are several on the face of it that could be acceptable to Ukraine. Others come across as vague and imprecise.Ukraine’s sovereignty would be “Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognized as de facto Russian, including by the United States”.In other words Ukraine and other countries would not need to recognise Russian control by law. That could enable Kyiv to accept such phrasing, as it would not impinge on Ukraine’s constitution that says its borders are ” indivisible and inviolable”.Elsewhere, in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzia, the front lines would be frozen and Russia would relinquish areas it has occupied elsewhere in Ukraine.Ukraine’s future – with EU but not NatoThe draft proposes significant commitments on Ukraine’s strategic future:”Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join Nato and Nato agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.””Ukraine is eligible for EU membership and will get short-term preferred market access to the European market while this issue is being evaluated.”There is little chance of Ukraine joining Nato any time soon and Russia has in recent months softened its stance on Ukraine’s candidacy for EU membership. The document appears to offer Kyiv access to EU markets while ignoring the views of 27 European countries. Joining both the EU and Nato are part of Ukraine’s constitution and another of Khrystyna Hayovyshyn’s red lines at the UN on Thursday was: “Nor will we tolerate any infringement on our sovereignty including our sovereign right to choose the alliances we want to join.”Other draft proposals are that Nato agrees not to station troops in Ukraine and that European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland. Kyiv would also have to commit to being a “non-nuclear state”.That appears to reject the West’s Coalition of the Willing’s plans led by the UK and France to help police any future deal.Bringing Russia back from isolationSeveral points refer to Russia being brought back from isolation with “Russia to be re-integrated into the global economy” and invited back into the G8 group of powers. That seems a long way off for now, with Putin under an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court. Russia was thrown out of the G7 after it seized and then annexed Crimea in 2014 and Trump tried to bring Putin back into the fold six years later.If the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan were reluctant before the full-scale invasion, there’s even less chance of that happening now.What about Russia’s frozen assets?The draft proposes that $100bn of frozen Russian assets should be invested “in US-led efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine”, with the US receiving 50% of the profits and Europe adding $100bn in investment for reconstruction.This is reminiscent of the US minerals deal with Ukraine earlier this year, extracting an American price for involvement, and it also leaves the European Union with nothing but hefty bills.The sums it mentions may not be sufficient, either: earlier this year the total cost of reconstruction in Ukraine was put at $524bn (€506bn).Some €200bn in Russia frozen assets are largely held by Euroclear in Belgium, and the European Union is currently working on a plan to use the money to fund Kyiv financially and militarily.The rest of those frozen assets would go to a “US-Russian investment vehicle”, under the draft, so Russia would see some of its money come back, but again there would be a financial benefit for the US.What is not in the plan?Several commentators have pointed out that the plan does not require weapons limitations on Ukraine’s military or its arms industry, even though the …
