On Sunday, Ukrainian President Voldemort, er, sorry… Volodymyr Zelensky was making the rounds of American media outlets discussing the war and his upcoming address to the United Nations. While speaking with Wolf Blitzer, an interesting question came up regarding a purported peace plan that Donald Trump claims could be quickly implemented if he returns to the White House. Zelensky claimed to be fully open to listen to any proposal but he wasn’t inclined to wait around to see if Donald Trump wins the next election. If the former president has a plan, Zelensky explained, he should put it out there now and get to work on it. And while I’m not generally a big fan of Commander Track Suit, in this case, I almost had to agree with him. But it also might not be anywhere near that simple, and Trump has made a few reasonable points against the idea of revealing it today. (NY Post)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged former President Donald Trump on Tuesday to release details of an apparent plan that the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner claims would end the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours.”

Trump, 77, has wildly bragged in several interviews and campaign events that if elected president next year, he would lead peace negotiations between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin and have the conflict resolved within one day.

The ex-commander-in-chief, however, has refused to provide details about the approach he would take to end the nearly 19-month-long war.

Zelensky said, “He can publicly share his idea now, not waste time.” And while his English is a bit broken (while still being light years better than my Ukrainian), he sounded as if he was putting some qualifiers on what sort of plan he would accept. He said, “How to push Russian from our land. Otherwise, he’s not presenting the global idea of peace.” In other words, any deal that involved allowing Russia to keep any parts of Ukraine would be a non-starter.

On one hand, if there were some sort of magic bullet that would bring the war to an immediate end and Trump knows what it is, of course we would want to know about it now. Every day the war drags on, more people are killed and more of Ukraine’s infrastructure is destroyed. God only knows who or what will be left in January of 2025 at this rate.

But at the same time, even if we are to assume that Trump does have a viable plan in mind, he’s made it fairly clear that it’s a strategy that could only be employed from the Oval Office, not from the private sector. And it could supposedly only be pulled off by him. During a couple of interviews earlier this year, Trump said that the President of the United States could be the one to “get them both in a room,” (Putin and Zelensky) and “tell them things.” When asked what sort of “things” he would be telling them, Trump said, “I don’t want to tell you what it is because then I can’t use that negotiation.”

Could he really pull it off? Well, Trump is Mr. Art of the Deal, so I suppose anything is possible. But let’s just say I remain skeptical. Trump would need to be either bringing up some sort of threat that would cow Putin into submission or presenting a brilliant compromise that both sides could swallow while still saving face. I agree that if Trump had still been in the White House last year, Putin might not have invaded, or at least he’d have thought twice about it. But now that the invasion is underway, retreating is an entirely different matter. He wouldn’t believe that Trump was threatening to declare war on Russia and Trump wouldn’t go that far, or at least I pray he wouldn’t. And threatening Zelensky is pointless because he’s ready to bite on any chance to get Russia out of the country and end the attacks.

But what plausible compromise is available? When Zelensky says ‘all Ukrainian territory‘ does he include Crimea? If so, there is simply no way that Putin would agree to entirely vacate the region that he’s held for a decade. The best we could hope for is getting the Russians to withdraw from all of the new territory that they’ve moved into since the invasion. A return to the pre-2022 borders should really be the goal, but even that might be too much for Putin’s pride to allow no matter what president is making the offer.

I believe Trump is being overly optimistic about his own abilities in this case and is likely just using this boast to gain leverage in the coming election. But then again, I’ve been wrong before, and underestimating Trump has not traditionally been a productive approach. Yet somebody needs to find a way to end this war long before the next election is over because the patience of the American public is growing thin.