Anne Applebaum

It's not especially, you know, populated anymore.

Most people have left that part of Ukraine, but it's very heavily fortified.

And so the Ukrainians would be giving up this fortified territory and that would allow the Russians then to set up.

presumably to make another attempt to conquer central Ukraine later on.

And that's what it looks like to the Ukrainians.

You know, so the Russians haven't been able to win the war militarily.

Now they're trying to win it through bribing the Americans, promising things to the Americans, and then, you know, getting the Americans to pressure the Ukrainians to give up this territory supposedly in the name of peace.

So that's probably the most controversial

piece of the deal.

And that seems to be something that Putin himself thought up.

And it's been kicking around for a while.

And in fact, when I first saw this document, I didn't think, I didn't make that much of it because it's been, some of the points have been around for a long time.

And it was only when, you'll remember a couple of weeks ago, the president said, Ukrainians have to sign this by Thanksgiving, that suddenly this became salient and relevant and

in new ways.

And then he dropped that idea.

Anyway, so that was a piece of it.

Recognition, not just de facto, but de jure, meaning formally recognizing that the Russians now control this Ukrainian territory, which also would be very unpopular in Ukraine.

There was a line in it about how

about organizing Ukrainian elections, which if you think about it, is a strange thing to put into a peace plan.

I mean, the Ukrainians organizing elections is something they can do