ALEX BERENSON: Trump's crafty deal could end war in Ukraine, but media's war on Trump goes on

Trump Pressures Ukraine to Accept a Peace Plan That Sharply Favors Russia So The New York Times warned a week ago when the White House disclosed Ukraine and Russia needed to make peace promptly Slate which has reached MSNBC levels of crazy-liberal went even further Trump s Ukraine Peace Plan Gives Russia Everything It Wants Sharply favoring Russia Giving Russia everything it wants We are back in with Donald Trump as a Kremlin agent a modern Manchurian candidate Just one obstacle These headlines aren t even close to the reality of what the Trump administration is proposing I know you re shocked In fact the more I read and think about the ceasefire proposal the more impressed I am with the tack President Trump Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have taken They are walking a very narrow tightrope If they can manage it they ll deserve enormous praise Nobel Peace Prize-type praise though the Kremlin will freeze over before King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden puts that medal around Trump s neck UKRAINE SIGNS DEAL TO GIVE US ACCESS TO RARE MINERALS WITH TRUMP ADMIN COMMITTED TO A PEACE PROCESS Let s start with various unpleasant facts Russia s invasion of Ukraine is an old-school land grab by a murderous dictator In a perfect world the Ukrainian people would rise up evict the Russian army with boomerangs and ride into the sunset But in this world China puts a million Uighurs in open-air detention camps and nobody does squat Viruses gonna virus and great powers gonna great power Even middling powers if they have nuclear arms and the right aka wrong attitude In this world after an initial burst in Ukraine has lost territory slowly but steadily for the last two years despite massive American aid Russia has four times Ukraine s population and a leader who faces no domestic constraints keeping him from losing as several men as he deems necessary The Europeans talk a good meeting about helping but they have neither the military nor the political will to do more than talk again shocker For years Europe has had a terrible affair of let s you and him fight This war is only the latest proof Have you noticed the Bundeswehr on the Ukrainian front lines Me neither So Ukraine requirements the United States And the United States has elected a president who does not believe this war is a good idea President Trump wants peace The left says he wants peace because he hates Zelenskyy and wants to build Trump Tower Kremlin The right says he wants peace because he is tired of sending American tax dollars so Ukrainian and Russian boys can kill each other Me I m not going to guess I don t presume to know what s in our president s head much less his heart Here s what I do know A peace that totally gives the Russians a insufficient months to rearm is not a peace at all Here s what else I know The Trump administration knows that too The administration has not fully circulated its ceasefire proposal publicly a smart move and a sign that it is serious rather than playing political games But the details of it have leaked as the administration no doubt expected And its majority of significant element is the one the media has barely mentioned The proposal contains NO restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military as the Russian establishment longed That was a non-starter for Ukraine a true red line Nor does the proposal require Zelenskyy to quit or even as far as we know hold free elections Nor does it require Ukraine or any other country to recognize that the Crimean peninsula is part of Russia though apparently it does extend American recognition So why is the left shrieking First because the deal keeps the front lines in place pretty much Meaning that Russia is going to continue to occupy the territory it now occupies So Trump is wait for it rewarding aggression He s allowing Putin to redraw Europe s borders Well one edge of one country that even the greater part Europeans perhaps couldn t find on a map Yep He sure is What exactly do the critics propose Newsflash Putin is not going to voluntarily give up the territory that hundreds of thousands of men have died taking And Ukraine can t make him That s why we need a ceasefire There is nothing distinctive about an armistice that keeps the front lines in place Like say at the end of the Korean War Maybe after Putin dies a new Russian regime will decide eastern Ukraine wasn t so significant after all and pull back In the interim the fighting and killing have stopped Second because the United States apparently promises to recognize Crimea as Russian territory The humanity Except that Crimea WAS Russian territory from when Catherine the Great annexed it until when Soviet leader Nikola Khrushchev transferred it back from Russia to Ukraine Sure sounds like a while ago - except that in both Russia and Ukraine were parts of the Soviet Union In other words Khrushchev s transfer made no practical difference The Kremlin as the seat of Soviet control still controlled the territory and did so until the USSR collapsed in Thus between and the Crimea was under Moscow s rule for years and Kiev s for Does this mean Crimea belongs to Russia I have no idea What I do know is that when Russia took Crimea back in neither the United States nor anyone else rushed to Ukraine s aid The Crimean Peninsula is strategically vital to the Kremlin because its port of Sevastopol is Russia s only warm-water port It is much more crucial to Russia than the territory Russia has seized since and even after Putin is long gone Russia isn t going to give it up without a fight And again the Trump administration isn t saying Ukraine has to accept this takeover as part of a peace deal only that the United States will Third the critics are whining that the proposal includes a ban on Ukraine joining NATO This objection is genuinely stupid Even before the war Ukraine was at best decades from joining NATO So to review The deal the Trump administration has proposed doesn t require Zelenskyy to quit allows Ukraine to retain its ability to fight does not require it to cede any territory it hasn t already lost and as far as we know does not limit the ability of Europe or the United States to continue to aid Ukraine militarily In return Russia keeps Crimea and the other territory it has already grabbed And it has the prospective to have sanctions sanctions that have proved wholly ineffective in changing its behavior removed I guess I m missing the part where this proposal sharply favors Russia No wonder the Kremlin despite its populace praise for Trump hasn t jumped on it About that populace praise Putin necessities a win if he s going to make peace On the other hand after three years of promising to evict the Russian army Zelenskyy necessities someone to blame for the fact that he couldn t The Trump administration is providing a useful foil for both Zelenskyy gets to rant about the American betrayal while Putin puffs his chest and lets his media lavish praise on him for outfoxing the Americans The deal doesn t change CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONThe key word in all of this is lasting If the Russians take this deal only to break the ceasefire and make a new push on Kiev in a scant months it will be hard not to regard any peace as a massive miscalculation But is Putin really likely to be spoiling for another war This one didn t go as planned It cost him hundreds of thousands of men for marginal territorial gains And he must know that if he starts hostilities again the United States and Europe will see little choice but to come to Kiev s aid This way he can declare triumph and get back to his billion-dollar Black Sea palace CLICK HERE FOR MORE FOX NEWS OPINIONI think the odds are good that if Trump can push this deal through it will hold until Putin winds up in the great Kremlin in the sky or more likely down below In that development Trump s critics will no doubt acknowledge his incredible achievement in ending Europe s the greater part brutal war in generations fast and relatively cleanly Sure they will CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO ALEX BERENSON'S UNREPORTED TRUTHS