From spectator to architect: Europe attempts to shape peace in Ukraine

For all its contradictions, the twelve-point plan is still an acknowledgment of power: that Europe, for once, can define the tempo, writes Sed Tkachuk.

Volodymyr (Sed) Tkachuk is a communications specialist and free-lance journalist, signing Sed Tkachuk. His other columns can be found here.

It took just nine and a half months of Trumpian chaos for Europe to remember — almost by instinct — that it actually has a foreign policy.

After nearly a year of summits that never happened, ceasefires that never stuck, and peace initiatives that sounded more like press releases, Europe finally rolled out its own proposal for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine — a twelve-point plan born less of optimism than of exhaustion.

Europe’s 12-point bid for peace in Ukraine: a response to stalled US diplomacy?

With U.S. President Donald Trump’s “peace mediation” swinging between flattery and fury — the Budapest summit canceled, the Tomahawk promises shelved — European Union countries decided it could no longer watch Washington juggle contradictions. Critics call the plan naïve; defenders say it’s pragmatic. In truth, it’s both. When Trump’s peace process starts to look like an improv show, Brussels begins to look like Broadway.

President Stubb’s initiative is deeply valuable because it keeps European security high on the global agenda. It converts Trump’s chaos into the energy of resistance. If Trump’s vanity can be turned into Europe’s safety, then it’s worth supporting.

Politicians have never learned to assess the inertia of war. They forget that every dictator has a business in it — and powers that exist only because the war does. The longer the conflict drags on, the more profitable it becomes for those who built their authority on it.

The timing isn’t coincidental. Trump has now spent over nine months attempting to end the war through charm offensives that produced neither charm nor offence — only confusion. His much-publicised phone calls with Putin ended in nothing more than rhetorical loop-de-loops.

By late October, after the cancelled meeting in Budapest, the United States had drifted from mediator to bystander. Europe saw its opening — or rather, its obligation. A genuine attempt, yes, but only after letting Trump roam the diplomatic field like a bull in a porcelain NATO shop.

Today, Europe helps Ukraine more than anyone else. But that’s also because, in doing so, it helps itself. Peace in Ukraine, for the EU, isn’t just about principle anymore. It’s about proximity — keeping refugees home, keeping tanks east, and keeping voters calm before the next election cycle.

Enter the twelve-point European peace framework, quietly circulated among twenty capitals and promptly leaked. The highlights read like a bureaucrat’s dream and a soldier’s nightmare: a ceasefire within twenty-four hours of mutual acceptance, a long-term non-aggression pact, monitoring under U.S. leadership using satellites and drones, and the transfer of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant to a “neutral” third party.

Other points include gradual sanctions relief tied to compliance, the return of abducted Ukrainian children, a prisoner-of-war exchange, and — for comic relief — a “Board of Peace” chaired by Donald Trump.

As deterrence goes, it’s politely minimalist. A non-deterrent deterrent — Europe’s way of saying to Moscow, we can’t stop you, but we’ll send emails if you try again.

And Trump as chairman? That’s geopolitical theatre at its most absurd. Still, it keeps him occupied — and if it converts his appetite for applause into even a few months of calm, it’s arguably worth the ticket price.

The hardest factor, however, is the invisible but very real influence of China. China does not recognise the territories Russia has seized over the past eleven years of war in Ukraine as belonging to Moscow. Yet no strategic decision of the Kremlin will be made without Beijing’s silent consent. Global investment has turned China into the world’s factory. If you need 100,000 drones, you can only buy them there. And it makes no difference whether you’re the aggressor or the one fighting back. Accusing Beijing of aiding the Kremlin too loudly could lead to China blocking those same purchases for Europe itself.

Finland’s fingerprints are all over the document. Having shared a border with Russian unpredictability for a century, Helsinki understands that “peace” is usually just an intermission between invasions.

Europe’s newfound assertiveness, however, walks the thin line between confidence and anxiety. Brussels is discovering its voice precisely because Trump’s America has lost its script. The EU no longer trusts Washington to protect its flank — not because of policy, but because of personality.

Without a slice of glory for China, any peace plan will demand far greater resolve — and far greater expense — from Europeans. They must increasingly understand that these costs are investments in their own security, because the last time Russia stopped, it was at the German river Oder. It’s unlikely to have a different plan this time.

The invisible hand is felt in every paragraph. Each clause of the plan asks an unspoken question — will this irritate Beijing? Europe’s conscience runs on batteries made in Shenzhen, and its drone components come from the same factories that keep Moscow’s war machines afloat. In the 21st century, morality still needs a supply chain.

Europe’s foreign policy has matured into what can only be described as tolerant ambivalence — indignant enough to scold, dependent enough to compromise.

The ceasefire logic sums it up: “Freezing the war” isn’t peace; it’s managed failure dressed up as diplomacy. It doesn’t stop the bleeding; it just changes who counts the bodies.

At home, voters are war-weary without ever having gone to war. Energy bills weigh more than battle maps. Europeans aren’t ready for conflict, they’re ready for winter subsidies.

For all its contradictions, the twelve-point plan is still an acknowledgment of power: that Europe, for once, can define the tempo. A ceasefire led by Washington’s satellites but drafted by Brussels’ diplomats is the closest thing to balance this transatlantic relationship has seen in years.

But power without preparation is performance. If Europe freezes the war without freezing its own complacency, it will have traded courage for quiet.

And if “Trump’s peace” fails again — as every peace built on photo ops tends to — the EU will once more find itself paying for American improvisation in euros and refugees.

But the New Europe must back this initiative with increased weapons production and an economic mobilisation that preserves social welfare. Any change in Europe’s social guarantees will shift its political landscape — and its electoral moods. That is why the continent now faces a crossroads: to tighten its belt and live in safety, or to consume the illusion of peace and lose everything.

The initiative is vital — but it also demands one more plan: a Plan for Europe’s Consolidation, for Security and Peace. A plan that unites state, private, and individual interests. Peace will depend not on the language of diplomacy, but on the courage of politics — and the honesty of those who tell its story.

Caption: Back from left: Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala; Middle row, left: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, EU President Antonio Costa, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; Front row, left: Finnish President Alexander Stubb, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk pose for a family photo during a summit on Ukraine, at Lancaster House in London, Britain, 02 March 2025. The British prime minister is hosting a summit of European leaders in London to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine. EPA/JAVAD PARSA