Anne Applebaum

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

on their own.

And what about the Russians organizing elections?

The Russians haven't had free elections for 20 years.

So, you know, it had that element in it that the Russians were somehow wanted to change the Ukrainian leadership and maybe hoped to shape the elections.

That was the second piece of the story.

There was also Ukraine has to promise never, ever, ever to join NATO and has to put that in its constitution.

Again, pretty controversial.

Don't know whether that could be done.

And that Western powers, European powers would promise never to put troops on Ukrainian soil.

And all this also creates another problem, which is if this war were to end even right now, you know, if there were to be a ceasefire on current lines, which is something the Ukrainians have accepted.

In order for the peace to be real, in order for it to last longer than six months or a year or two years, there has to be some reason for Ukrainians to believe that the war isn't going to just start up again next week.

So there has to be a guarantee.

There have to be troops.