Ukraine’s Last Chance To Save Odessa | Dr. Michael Rossi

The leak of a 28‑point peace plan has thrust the war over Ukraine back into the spotlight, but beneath the headlines lies a deeper contest over what peace would mean and who would shape it. The conversation with Dr. Michael Rossi makes clear that the plan is less a neutral blueprint for reconciliation than a prism through which competing strategic logics are revealed: Russia’s desire to consolidate gains, the United States’ oscillating posture between engagement and disengagement, EU political pride tied to territorial integrity, and Ukraine’s agonizing calculus between survival and sovereignty. Understanding these dynamics matters because the immediate question—can Odessa and the Ukrainian state be preserved?—is linked to longer term questions about European credibility, post‑Cold War security architecture, and the kinds of guarantees that can bind revisionist and status‑quo powers alike. ## Is the Peace Proposal Serious or Just Political Theater? At face value, the 28‑point plan reads like a diplomatic compromise; in practice it resembles a take‑it‑or‑leave‑it blueprint that largely validates Russian ambitions. As Dr. Michael Rossi notes, the original draft effectively offers Russia de facto control over Crimea, the Donbas, and parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, while consigning Ukraine to a militarily neutral status and keeping NATO’s expansion frozen in practice. Presented to Kyiv as an immediate path to ceasefire, the proposal functions both as a peace offer and a coercive instrument: end the fighting quickly for massive territorial losses, or continue grinding into a protracted war with uncertain external backing. The theatrical quality of recent diplomacy stems from this dual role. Public pronouncements about negotiations and amendments—whereby the EU tried to reshape the text to preserve Ukrainian territorial claims and to invent an “honorary Article 5” protection—signal political maneuvering more than a shared commitment to a durable settlement. For some actors, the plan is a bargaining chip to extract concessions; for others, it is a way to define the parameters of what peace might legitimize. In short, the plan is serious insofar as it reflects a real willingness among some parties to recalibrate the map; but it is also political theater insofar as leaks, posturing, and conditional amendments are being used to test domestic audiences and adversaries alike. ## US Rhetoric vs. Reality: Is Washington Ready to Cut Support? Words and deeds have diverged sharply in Washington. High‑profile statements about peace and pressure on Kyiv can be read as rhetoric that prefigures a policy of reduced entanglement. Yet the critical test is operational: would the U.S. actually sever intelligence sharing, close bases, or otherwise withdraw the invisible tools that sustain Ukraine’s defense? As the conversation emphasized, rhetoric without the disabling of networks—including intelligence, satellite support, and clandestine logistics—amounts to little more than an exit narrative. Only such concrete steps would demonstrate a genuine intention to “wash hands” and force Kyiv into cliff‑edge decisions. This gap between speech and action is politically useful for Washington. It allows the administration to signal both a desire for peace and a willingness to preserve leverage, keeping allies and adversaries guessing. At the same time, it imposes acute strain on Kyiv: ambiguous signals from Washington can be read internally as betrayal, or as leeway to keep fighting—neither of which is a stable basis for policy. The U.S. posture therefore risks producing a perverse equilibrium where Kyiv fights on under partial commitments, Europe scrambles to fill gaps, and the conflict grinds toward attrition that benefits neither security nor diplomacy. ## Why Russia Entertains US Mediation Despite Distrust Moscow’s flirtation with U.S. mediation may look paradoxical given deep mutual distrust, but strategic calculation explains the anomaly. Russia’s objective is control and consolidation of territorial gains; a U.S.‑brokered ceasefire that formalizes those gains—explicitly or tacitly—advances that aim. From a conflict‑management perspective, accepting U.S. mediation carries the potential to end active combat on favorable terms while gaining international legitimacy for the new status quo. Moreover, even if Moscow distrusts Washington, a mediated settlement provides political cover. Rather than appearing to capitulate to Ukraine or the West, Russia can claim it negotiated a deal that secured its security concerns and territorial objectives. For a Kremlin that prizes both strategic victory and domestic narratives of strength, a negotiated end that looks like consolidation is attractive. Finally, engaging with U.S. initiatives can fragment Western cohesion: a deal agreed under U.S. auspices that excludes full European buy‑in could leave the EU sidelined and normalize a new order on Russia’s terms. ## Does Ukraine Have a Choice? Avoiding a "Munich Moment" The conversation repeatedly returned to the moral and practical dilemma Kyiv faces: accept a humiliating peace that preserves life and state institutions but sacrifices territory and political autonomy, or continue fighting with diminishing external support and mounting casualties. This is the core of the “Munich moment” analogy: the fear that concessions now will invite future aggression and that concessions made by others on Ukraine’s behalf will delegitimize its sovereignty. Ukraine’s options are constrained. Militarily, the balance of forces, logistics, and battlefield momentum increasingly favor Russia in many theaters. Politically, domestic threats—from hardliners who would punish any leader who ceded land to the pragmatists willing to trade territory for survival—make decisive compromises costly. Internationally, wavering Western support means Kyiv cannot assume an ironclad shield. Avoiding a repeat of 1938’s appeasement requires credible guarantees, robust internal cohesion, and a bargain that does not simply enshrine territorial loss as the cost of peace. The hard truth is that choice is not binary; it is a sequence of constrained judgments under pressure—a tragedy of sorts for democratic decision‑making in wartime. ## Trust Issues, Written Guarantees, and the BRICS Audience Trust is the currency of any enforceable peace, and trust is in painfully short supply here. The suggestion that written guarantees—legal instruments, security compacts, or treaty provisions—could replace the messy politics of trust runs into the problem of enforcement. Who would enforce guarantees if they are violated? Western powers lack appetite for direct military confrontation with Russia, and multilateral mechanisms such as the UN Security Council are vulnerable to veto and paralysis. In this environment, guarantees have symbolic value but limited practical enforcement power. An additional layer complicates the calculus: the international audience beyond NATO and the EU. The BRICS countries and other non‑Western powers are watching. For them, a negotiated outcome that recognizes spheres of influence or de facto borders could be read as evidence that the post‑Cold War order is mutable and that Western normative primacy is eroding. Russia can leverage that narrative to posture as a defender of multipolarity, while the U.S. and European actors worry about precedent. Thus any guarantee regime has to be credible not just to Kyiv and Moscow but to a global audience assessing whether treaty commitments still mean what they used to. ## The Crisis of Competence in European Leadership One of the most striking themes in the exchange is the perceived crisis of European competence. Europe’s rhetorical commitment to Ukraine’s territorial integrity clashes with its limited capacity to act independently: military readiness varies across capitals, logistical and procurement bottlenecks persist, and political unity is fragile. The conversation s

Ukraine’s Last Chance To Save Odessa Ever since Donald Trump came back into office, the US went through several phases of diplomacy and then renewed military escalations with Russia. The latest swing of the pendulum has us again talking about peace, this time based on a so-called 28-point plan. But is it a real effort toward peace or just the latest ploy to lure Moscow into giving up its battle field advantage? Here to discuss with me today is Dr. Michael Rossi, a lecturer of International Relations at Rutgers University and the Host of the Michal Rossi PolSci YouTube Channel. Links: Michael's YT Channel: @MichaelRossiPoliSci Michael's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rossisci Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz. substack.com Goods Store: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:07:24 Is the Peace Proposal Serious or Just Political Theater? 00:16:11 US Rhetoric vs. Reality: Is Washington Ready to Cut Support? 00:22:24 Why Russia Entertains US Mediation Despite Distrust 00:27:49 Does Ukraine Have a Choice? Avoiding a "Munich Moment" 00:31:00 Trust Issues, Written Guarantees, and the BRICS Audience 00:38:10 The Crisis of Competence in European Leadership 00:47:24 Conclusion & Future Projects #Pascal Ever since Donald Trump came back into office, the U.S. has gone through several phases of diplomacy and then renewed military escalation with Russia. The latest swing of the pendulum has us again talking about peace, this time based on a so-called 28-point plan. But is it a real effort toward peace, or just the latest ploy to lure Moscow into giving up its battlefield advantage? Here to discuss this with me today is Dr. Michael Rossi, a lecturer in international relations at Rutgers University and the host of the Michael Rossi Policy YouTube channel. #Michael Rossi Michael, welcome back. Thank you for having me once again, Pascal. Always a pleasure to be a guest on your channel. #Pascal Very happy to have you here, because you're one of the people who also follows the Russian sources. You speak and read Russian fluently, and you've done a lot of research in the former Soviet Union states—Uzbekistan and so on. So I really wonder about your perspective on what this means at the moment, because it has a kind of theatrical character to it, doesn’t it? This up and down, this pendulum movement between “let’s send more missiles, more intelligence,” to “oh no, no, no, peace plan here.” And it’s like the second or third iteration now. How do you make sense of it? #Michael Rossi -- 1 of 15 -- Okay, so, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I need to go into a bit of an explanation here, because I want to take this into a broader perspective about the basic elements of what we’d call conflict resolution—something I would hope all sides are committed to pursuing when it comes to the war in Ukraine. You know, conflict resolution begins with the whole idea of conflict management and what that ultimately means. Monday morning, eight o’clock, step one: stop the fighting. Stop the killing. Stop the battle. Stop the war. What do we need to do to end the war? This is something that all four sides—the Ukrainian side, the Russian, the American, and the European side—want. How we get to that, though, is a different story. Right now, the big radio chatter is about the so-called 28-point Trump peace plan for Ukraine, which, if you’ve looked at it—and I’ve looked at it—largely gives Russia what it’s been wanting for the last four or five years. And that is a non-aggression pact between Russia and NATO, security guarantees for what’s left of Ukraine, and de facto recognition of Russia’s control over Crimea and the entire Donbas—that includes the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics—as well as the territory Russia currently controls in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. It also talks about the prospects for Ukraine’s future, perhaps in the European Union, but with no mention at all of NATO. Ukraine would be a militarily neutral country. It would also enact measures to de-escalate ethnocentric extremism against the Russian-speaking minority and find a modus vivendi with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate, as well as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. This is a very important point that I think a lot of Western sources tend to overlook—the battle over who controls the soul of the Ukrainian people. Is it the Russian Orthodox Church that operates within Ukraine, or the newly elevated Orthodox Church of Ukraine? The differences are really about the patriarchs more than anything else. But the big thing here—and I think your viewers and my viewers will all agree on this—is that the initial proposal offered by the Trump administration was something Ukraine was given as a take-it-or-leave-it offer, a ceasefire it couldn’t afford to refuse. If Zelensky agreed to these terms, the war would end. But his tenure in office would be over. Ukraine would effectively have to capitulate and lose vast amounts of territory in its eastern and southern regions. And Europe would be little more than a bystander. What we understand in the coming days—and I’m glad we’ve had this conversation at least 24 to 48 hours after the leak of this information—is that the EU has issued a series of amendments and revisions to these 28 points, either augmenting or deepening the meaning of each, and eliminating as many as possible to keep Ukraine somehow in the fight. What the amendments do is leave Ukraine's membership in NATO on the table as an ambiguous idea to consider. They remove the idea of recognizing Russia's de facto control over Crimea and the Donbas. So they do everything possible to affirm Ukraine's territorial integrity within its 1991 borders. They increase the number of Ukrainian defense forces from 600,000 to 800,000. And they also place Ukraine under a special blanket protection package tied to NATO’s Article 5—meaning NATO won’t make Ukraine a member, but as long as the ceasefire and peace agreement hold, and -- 2 of 15 -- as long as Russia doesn’t escalate tensions, NATO will treat any further incursion into Ukrainian territory as an attack against its own. This is one of the major revisions that I think came out of the Geneva edits, and that’s basically giving Ukraine an honorary Article 5 despite its non-NATO membership. Now, the big question we should discuss is whether these revisions are going to be accepted by the Kyiv government, and whether this is something that can be honestly presented to the Russian side as a basis for ceasefire negotiations. I might be the pessimist here, but I just don’t see any changes coming from the European side as anything Russia would even remotely take seriously. #Pascal One of the issues is—and a couple of people here in the YouTube comment section have pointed this out—that the original 28-point plan already includes elements Russia basically rejected before. One of those things—well, okay, not something they explicitly rejected—but the money part, all those hundreds of billions in frozen Russian assets that are somehow supposed to go into reconstruction, half of which would be U.S.-owned, and things like that. But on the other hand—this, again, the honorary Article 5, these security guarantees that will be given—on the other hand, the Russians have signaled that they’re willing to use the U.S. plan as a basis for negotiation, which actually baffles a couple of people. That’s the first thing. I’d also say the European version is completely out of the question. It’s like, yeah, you—Europe—and what army? Europe is, in some sense, really weird in how they keep talking: “Russia must lose, we must protect.” Yeah, you and who? I mean, it drives me crazy. #Michael Rossi But we can spend some time talking academics. And then, if you really want to get personal, I think you and I are going to be on the same page. No, it’s—what are you envisioning? What are you envisioning? Yeah. #Pascal Maybe let’s put that aside. Your thoughts on the points that are already in the original plan—it’s very dubious whether the Russians can accept them. And we know that because Vladimir Putin had a meeting with his security council about three days ago, which he chaired, and he took a question that was clearly planted. He said, more or less literally, that Russia would prefer a military solution to the conflict, right? He’d rather use the momentum, move forward, and create a military solution. Which brings me back to what you said at the beginning—that everybody wants to get to peace. I kind of doubt that. I mean, I don’t want to accuse the Russians of this, but I certainly want to accuse certain factions in America—the neocons, the Applebaums, and so on—of just wanting to use this as a moment to fire even more missiles at Russia. -- 3 of 15 -- #Michael Rossi War—what is it good for? The economy, the industry, the military‑industrial complex. #Pascal I mean, we have people’s fantasies, you know. Absolutely. These people are in power. So, on both sides, we still have very strong logics that actually drive the conflict. #Michael Rossi Yes, you're absolutely correct. And let's be honest here—I mean, Europe has been one of the most hawkish elements in all this. And, you know, they have one argument that is, I wouldn’t say impossible to counter, but one that certainly tugs at the heartstrings of many people’s opinions. And that is: Ukraine was invaded by another country, and the territory that this other country has controlled has now been annexed into its own. I mean, this is imperial expansion. And, you know, you can talk about whether or not Russia was justified in intervening, whether Ukraine was a proxy or a dupe in all of this, whether NATO is ultimately the primary agent in escalating a security dilemma with Russia, right? The fact that—and I have to be very honest here—the fact that Russia has decided to control and annex territory from another country into its own sovereign control is one of the primary reasons why both NATO and the European Union have put their entire stock, their reputation, their ideology on the line in defending Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. Because if the 28‑point plan is to be implemented—and we have evidence, take it however you want, Pascal—the radio chatter, at least from the Telegram channels I’ve been looking at, suggests that, left to their own devices, Zelensky and Umarov, Ukraine’s minister of defense, were ready to write off territorial concessions if it meant: A, an end to the war; B, solid American security guarantees for its longevity; and C, eventual incorporation into the European Union. It's not something they want to make public. And if I can, you know, just share for the sake of argument what we're getting from the Telegram channels—and this is not from the Russian side, this is from the Ukrainian side—Zelensky was told, in no uncertain terms, by members of the more hardline factions that influence the government, the military, and so on: if he signs this peace deal, he has 24 hours left to live. If he's still in Ukraine, it's a death sentence. He's signing away at least 20 percent of Ukraine's territory. So he’d better have his plane gassed up, the money in the sacks, and whatever doctor he plans on running off to in the US or the UK all secured, because if he signs this, he's done. He's absolutely done. So it's not a surprise that the Kyiv government is going to reject the original points of the 28‑point proposal, because it effectively gives Russia everything it wants—including Ukraine's long‑term neutrality and NATO's halting of any expansion. If you look at the 28 points, it doesn't say this -- 4 of 15 -- explicitly, but it mentions that NATO will not extend further than it is now. It doesn't say it will not include Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, or even Armenia, but put two and two together, and what it effectively means is that NATO stops exactly where it is. Now, for those of us who are more willing