The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: leaked peace plan for ending the war in Ukraine demands major concessions from Zelensky

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

The full length edition of this week's' Friday Focus podcast is being made available to all paying and non-paying subscribers. To sign up to watch the livestream of our upcoming December 3rd Munk Debate on the Two-State Solution, click here. Rudyard and Janice unpack the leaked 28-point draft peace plan for Ukraine negotiated between US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev. The deal requires Ukraine to give up the remainder of the Donbas region in exchange for a security guarantee from Europe and the US, yet puts the pathway to NATO membership for Ukraine put on hold. What happens if Zelensky, who is already unpopular and facing deep divisions at home, accepts this deal? Does he have room to negotiate? Meanwhile, the rest of Europe is watching closely and preparing for war. Do the Baltic and eastern European states have reason to be concerned? Is European deterrence a failure? And what role can and will NATO play in pushing back against Russian aggression?Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 20th of November. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, chair of the monk debates, joined by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Hey, Janice. Hey, Rudyard, how are you doing this third week of November? My goodness, it's almost December. I am bagging leaves before they freeze in place and become the bane of my existence over the course of the winter. So it is officially the last days of fall, and I can feel, yeah, feel things changing here in Toronto fast.

Talk about fast changes. We want to get into the latest news today coming out of the Ukraine. A leaks that suggest a deal that Steve Whitkoff, Trump's advisor possibly, is cooked up with the Russians. I'd be very punitive to Ukraine. But before I do that, I just want to remind. our monk donors. That's anyone at $50 up who is a supporter of either this podcast or our main stage debates that there are still a few, and it is a few, tickets remaining for our December 3rd monk debate on a two-state solution here live in downtown Toronto, featuring, among others,

Ehud Olmert, the former Prime Minister of Israel, Michael Oren. former Netanyahu minister and former U.S. ambassador from Israel to the United States. Janice, you're going to be with me at the debate. Is that right? I am. And, you know, one interesting thing struck me, about all the debaters. They're all former members, the member at one time or another of that center, what used to be the center right party in Israel, which is the Likud, and many of them have split as the prime minister moved to the right. So it's quite interesting, really.

They all know each other, but disagree. Very deep disagreements on this issue of a two-state solution. Look, I think it will be an important debate to test the waters and find out, is Israel, are its politics, are key political figures ready to move forward on a conversation about a two-state solution, potentially to move beyond what is an increasingly fragile ceasefire. If you are not a donor, but you would like to come to the debate and you want access to these few remaining tickets that are available to donors, become one now. You can do that on our website. triple-w monk debates.com. That's MUNK Debates with an S.com. Just look for the join button

in the top right-hand corner of our homepage. Well, Janice, let's talk Ukraine. A leak here of another one of these kind of Gaza-esque 20-point-plus plans. The pen on this, supposedly, is Steve Whitkoff, the former New York City real estate developer and a longstanding friend of President Donald J. Trump. What did you take away from this leak and the key elements that are in this draft plan to bring an end to this war? No, Roger, it's an astonishing document. It was negotiated in secret between Steve Whitkoff and curious. and Dmitzsche. So both these presidents, you know, shut out their normal people with experience in doing this thing.

And we get a 28-point document. When I read it, what jumped out at me, Ukraine gives up the remainder of the Donbaths, which it currently controls. That's about 15% of two provinces. allegedly the Russian army will not occupy it, but it will control it, it will be disarmed. Everywhere else, there's a ceasefire in place. In exchange for all that, Rutyard Kiev gets a guarantee from Europe, and the United States that there will be no further Russian aggression against it.

Well, for the record, in 1994, Ukraine got a guarantee from the United States. United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia when it returned Soviet nuclear weapons, that its borders would remain as they were at that time. So if we look at the details of the agreement, as elucidated in this 28-point leak, a key part of it looks to be that a pathway to NATO for Ukraine is effectively put on a hold. And maybe more importantly, there is some acknowledgement, understanding in this deal that the remilitarization of Ukraine would be curtailed. There would be, in a sense, caps or different prohibitions on different types of weapon systems that would be made available. But effectively, it is a

quasi kind of demilitarization of Ukraine in addition to the loss of these non-conquered territories, in addition to what, as you said, sounds like a permanent hand that Russia would have, both militarily, economically, and therefore one could extend that in a sense to a considerable amount of political influence over Kiev. The president, Janus, is rumored to. have bought into this, that this isn't just Steve Wittkoff freelancing off on his own. What does that say? What does that say, I guess, about the state of American policy and this president's obsession with ending this war on seemingly whatever terms, terms that look, especially beneficial or favorable to Russia and Vladimir Putin?

I think that's very gentle the way you just described it, Richard. The size of the Ukrainian military would be cut in half. But according to these leaked documents that come from Barack Rabid at Axios, who has unique access, finally, to the White House. So I tend to attach some confidence to these leaks. I just imagine you've lost control of 20% of your territory. There are Russian forces in the South, and your army is cut in half, and the types of weapons you can buy are restricted.

That puts Ukraine, frankly, in a very, very dangerous situation. You know, just to jump ahead for a moment, right here, I'd be astonished if Zelensky accepted this. There are deep domestic problems at home right now in Ukraine. This would be the finish of him, I think, if he did. And he has not signaled in any way that he will accept it. He's in fact talking now, as he has in the past to European allies in yet another attempt to push back. So U.S. General's senior staff are shortly in Ukraine for discussions, I assume, about this.

That's not the explicit purpose of their trip, which is to review Ukraine's military readiness. But this surely is going to come up. So what kind of situation does Zelensky now face? Because there seem to have been since that disastrous meeting in the old. office earlier this spring summer to now a repression to now a new punitive deal on the table. What does Zelensky do? Does he need to humor the president, to kick the can on this deal, to have conversations around it, either with the Americans or even with the Russians, or is he in a position to declarative and firmly indicate that no, there will be no concessions of land.

There will be no significant demilitarization of Ukraine and that this deal is unacceptable. You know, he's in a really, really terrible spot right now, frankly, with his back to the wall. You mentioned Richard that the Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll is heading this delegation. and there are two generals that are going with him from the army. One of them is General Donahue. And we know now from New York Times reporting about the kind of assistance that the Biden administration gave Solansky. That Donahue was their best partner, the most trusted American, and has extensive relationships with the Ukrainian military. They were very, very sorry to see him leave his post when he returns the United States.

I thought that was a really interesting choice because he will be able to reach out to some of his counterparts, get a read on what the military situation is, and even on the domestic political situation in Ukraine, which is a time right now because of a pretty damn encouraging. corruption scandal, frankly, related of all things to energy when the energy grid in Ukraine is being bombed. So the public is furious about it. You know, what is the staying power of Zelensky here? Generally speaking, when you're weak at home, you're unable to make any concessions. And I think Zelensky will say very little. He will go to go to Kier Starrmer and Emmanuel Macron, who have been stalwart supporters, Friedrich Meritz in Germany,

see how much running room they think he has, ask them to intercede with Donald Trump. So I don't think this story is over by any means, but for Europe, and not only for Zonski, but for Europe, who are increasingly thinking about war. I have just struck as a result of a series of conversations I've had in the last few weeks. They are thinking about and anticipating war in the next five years. This is a really discouraging moment to see Donald Trump circle back to fundamentally the place he was in an individual. at that famous summit meeting with Vladimir Putin. This is an agreement that meets virtually all of Putin's demands.

This is happening against a backdrop of two recent events. One, a searing corruption scandal in Ukraine related to its atomic energy industry, potentially upwards of $100 million U.S. embezzled by political and other. allies close to President Zelensky, a real blow to him and his administration, and then a railway sabotage in Poland, where the Polish government alleges that two women who were working for Russia, Russian agents, or to somebody have a connection back to Russia, were responsible for this bombing of a railway track. No one was injured, no trains were derailed,

but Poland is alleging that this effectively was an act of Russian sabotage on rail lines that are important to the transportation of weapons and material from Poland into Ukraine to support the Ukraine war effort. What texture do those two events give to this, this moment of this leaked plan. And I think we have to assume that this leak was not unintentional, that this leak is being either put out, people alleged by the Russians, or who knows, maybe by Wittkoff and the Trump administration himself to put pressure on Zelensky and what seems like a moment of, you know, of danger and of crisis for this president personally, politically, again,

though all against the backdrop, as you said, of Russia that continues to poke and prod and probe European readiness and European resilience in the face of Russian aggression. You know, Whitkoff himself, not a typical performance of the Trump administration tweeted, this must be from K, this leak must be from K. Well, the K he's talking about is Kereil Dmitra. this close friend of Vladimir Putin. He was in Alaska when Putin was there. And it was the two of them that negotiated this. So at the very least, it looks like this was a Russian leak. And that's not surprising, frankly. Look, Roger, it's difficult to convey to North Americans. How nervous,

Europeans are. I just happened to be in a meeting with senior officers from Europe. So Poland, Finland, Sweden, Hungary, Romania, and everybody went around the table just to take the temperature as you just did. This was the gloomiest conversation I've ever heard from Europeans. They're convinced that Russia is, as you rightly just said, now probing. sending groans over commercial airports, engaging in election interference, sabotaging railway networks that are used to ship military equipment into Ukraine. And you think back to February 2022, Russia, Putin never touched any of the NATO allies that were supplying Ukraine throughout the war. That has changed in the last three months where these incidents begin to accumulate. The Europeans are scared. They see Ukraine as the front line, as long as Ukraine is fighting.

That preoccupies the Russians, but their expectation is that if there is a capitulation, and it's entirely possible to describe this as that, if the United States backs off, that they are in the eye at the storm, and it's just a sooner or later question for the Baltics and for some of the East European states. Yeah, I guess, look, what do I know? These are military officers in their respective countries who are assessing the strat,

but it would suggest that European deterrence is a failure. And I think you just have to look at the numbers and the respect. force sizes, Europe, without any American support, dwarfs Russia in terms of fighter jets, tanks, troops, missiles. So to suggest that Russia is somehow, you know, waiting to kind of march on Paris would, I don't know, I'm just skeptical off. I think I just have a skeptic. I think all of us having gone through the Iraq War, Afghanistan and elsewhere, you know, militaries do like to be seen as important by their respective governments. They have a book, so to speak, to use a

stockbroker term, that they like to talk up. And right now they're getting showered in resources in men, women, material, debt financed by European governments, who themselves are facing a bit of a legitimacy crisis, who themselves are being attacked often from the populist right. These are more traditional centrist governments in France and Germany, in particular, UK too, with Starmor, who at times, Janice, I think, do turn to the bogeyman of Vladimir Putin and this supposedly existential threat that Russia represents to, I think, at times, try to take out a bit of a barge pole and push off their right-wing pot. populist opponents who often legitimately or illegitimately have connections back to Russia

who are financing their political movements, as in the case of Marie Le Pen and allegations around the ADF in Germany. So I just, I take this all with a little bit of a grain of salt, I would think, that that militaries, yeah, they have interest too. These are powerful institutions, powerful bureaucracies, they want what they want. And Vladimir Putin has been a gift to NATO and to these domestic militaries in Europe, giving them new saliency and relevancy during, after a, I don't know, 30-year period of neglect and proverbial drought when it came to public funding and public support. You know, I think you're absolutely right to say.

Is it credible to believe that Flatter on where Putin is going to march on Paris? No, I don't think that's going to happen. That's not where the fear is coming from right here. It's coming from Sweden, for example, which is moving now to impose a draft, what amounts to a draft. Now, that is never a popular move by a government with its own population, frankly. Finland already has one. It has the largest proportionally per capita

standing army of any country in Europe. Sweden is falling suit. Poland, which has good historical reason to worry about Russia. This is not the first time they've seen this movie and the movie never has ended well for Poland. Romania, it's the front. states where the fear, it's not in Britain or France or Germany, it's in those front line states

that there is genuine fear about after Ukraine, what next? And, you know, just to switch sides for one second, we haven't talked about how exhausted the Russian army is. It's not only missiles and tanks. the biggest problem for Ukraine and the biggest problem for Russia are soldiers. Russia is bribing people now to join the army. They are recruiting foreign volunteers to join. So you have to ask yourself, what would it take for Vladimir Putin to swallow Ukraine

or a chunk of it as he has if this deal goes through? he would have to take time to regroup and reorganize before he did anything else. They know that, the Swedes, the Finns, the Poles. They're worried about five years from now, frankly. Yeah, I mean, Finland's an interesting example. Russia had never reinvated after the winter war. So, yes, Poland has had mandatory subscription and a large domestic military force for decades. and it's been either an effective deterrence or Russians simply aren't willing to pay the price,

with an economy the size of Canada, you know, to start a war with NATO, because that's what an invasion of the Baltic countries would require. So it's just an inherent to me kind of contradiction in the argument is that NATO thumbs its chest about how it is an essential deterrent to Russian aggression, but then it's effectively saying, well, we're not a deterrent, we're worried about being invasional. So you're either one or the other. You're either a deterrent or you're not. And more recently, the government of the United Kingdom and France in particular have made noises that they will extend their nuclear umbrella over the rest of Europe. So now you're even talking, not even conventional

deterrence, you're talking the potential for nuclear deterrence. And not just from the United States, heaven forbid, but from France in particular, but also the UK, who are themselves, nuclear powers, with the full triad, with submarines, with ground-based weapons, and air-based weapons. So at what point is enough of, you know, is enough enough? Like, at what point are you armed to the teeth or you're not? And it just never seems like it's enough. It never seems like there's enough deterrence and that there's always a risk. And yes, there probably is always a risk. There's the mad men, unfortunately, not mad women, but the mad men of history that occasionally erupt and do completely irrational things. I don't think Vladimir Putin has shown

himself, though, despite being a ruthless killer, someone who deserves to go in front of the International Court of the Hague and be tried for war crimes, the worst of the worst. But despite that, he seems like to be as calculating a leader as anyone else in the free world, frankly, including Donald J. Trump. You know, I would just tell you this, Roger, that I was asked in January of 2022 whether I thought Vladimir Putin would have been Ukraine. And I said, no way. That's not a rational decision. It will bleed his army. He will not accomplish his subjectives. You know, he can coerce without ever sending a soldier across the border and get most of what he want. So, but I was wrong. And so are many others wrong. So how much the terms is

enough? That's not a military question in the final analysis. It's always a psychological question. And it depends on getting into the head. of an adversary that we never fully understand. I got it wrong at that time. Well, what did I miss about Vladimir Putin that he would use his army, the way he used his army, for the last three and a half years

and pay the price that he's paid for, you know, to gain control of 25% of Ukraine? How much sense did that ever make when you think about it rationally? So sometimes rationality fails us all. Right, but you would agree that Ukraine is a different case for Russia. And again, it's not an argument that I accept, but it's not a rational argument for Vladimir Putin. It's a historical argument.

It goes back to the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox Church with the baptism of the original kind of Slavic tribes of the Kievan Rus. This is hollow ground for Russians throughout, you know, centuries of history. history. And we know from Putin's lengthy, you know, three-hour orations, his deep and detailed knowledge of this history and the grievances that he attaches to it. I don't think Putin has the same type of, you know, historical memory and angst over Copenhagen or Warsaw or these other capitals. I just think it's a false equivalency. And it and it paints the Russians, you know, in ways that, you know, it seem rather conveniently oriental as opposed to Occidental, which is, you know, the fundamental debate about Russia through the history of Russia going back to Peter the Great.

Is it a country of Asia and the Horde and the Mongol invasion, or is it a country willing to embrace Europe and European style and values? So I don't think we should give up on that other future for Russia and that other reality that is still part of Russian. culture and identity. It still has Western antecedents and Western impulses. And yes, this is an absolute low point of the relationship between Russia and Europe. But I worry about this characterization of kind of Russia as irrational, you know, Slavic kind of otherness, mysticism that we cannot understand or interpret and that the Russian bear will lunge across the border, you know, seizing us about the neck as soon as it gets its chance. It all sounds rather theatrical and not saying you, but some European leaders and rather

hysterical. Well, you know, it would be easier to accept your argument if the Russians had not used drones over the Copenhagen airport twice or three times. And if they hadn't done the same, in Sweden, in Stockholm, there was a consistent pattern in the last three months of Russian probing and testing. And why do they do this?

Because they are watching to see how Swedish and Dutch air defenses work in response and they've done the same thing as you just said at the beginning of the show just recently on the Polish Railway. How is that consistent with a country for whom Ukraine is more than enough way out into the distant future? Well, because we escalated on them. We escalated with Heimar missiles, with F-16 fighter planes, with large-scale, tens of, of billions of dollars of military support. They're escalating in the way that Russians escalate, which is asymmetrical, which is covert, which often involves sabotage and, you know, the use of their espionage services. This is very much in a longstanding kind of Russian playbook.

And one set of escalations, as we've talked over the last few years, but gets another set of escalations. And who's to say that the Russians have to escalate the way that we escalate? Frankly, they can't because if they escalated the way that we've escalated in this conflict, and I agree, I think we've escalated in ways that are valid and represent, you know, support for the Ukraine people, the Ukraine military at a moment of kind of dire existential threat to that country. But it's not as if the Russians have the entire economies and war chess of the United States and Europe to, you know, to play their side of the war in terms of the tools and cards that we've put down on our side of the war. So you can't blame them for doing what they can or want to do to create doubt, to create

insecurity, to create second-guessing. This is a war. You know, I don't know what? I actually do blame them because if your goal is a settlement, right, which encompasses 25% of Ukraine, you're sending a signal to everybody in your, in Europe. We're going to stop. That's it for now. When you do what Russia has done over the last three months,

you're creating exactly the opposite of that. And I don't believe they're irrational enough not to know that they are scaring the northern countries, the countries of northern Europe, the Baltics, and their borderline states when they do this kind of thing. And they're persistently doing it for the last three months. Either it's really dumb or it's deliberate. It's wrong way. We will leave it there. Dumb or deliberate is the byword for today's show.

Janice, have a great trip to the Halifax Security Forum and we'll debrief with you on our show next week. And just because we didn't take a break on the show, we wanted to give the entire episode to our full community. Let me pull up our new curator this. week and thank Jill Denham for joining as a curator. Curators get all kinds of great benefits here at the monk debates, including the opportunity for guaranteed seating at our live debate. So again, if you are not a monk donor and you don't have to become a curator, you can become either a supporter or just

simply a subscriber to this podcast for as little as a dollar a week. You will get special ticketing privileges right now. You'll get an email as soon as you join our community, and you can get tickets yourself before the general public to the December 3rd Monk debate on a two-state solution. Do that right now by heading to our website, triple w monkdebates.com. Click on the join button on the top right hand of our homepage. Until next time, I'm Roger Griffiths. Bye-bye. Have a good week.