Ukraine Learns the Price of American Support

A Thanksgiving deadline, a hollow guarantee, and a Europe only backstop force Kyiv into a choice among disasters.

Over the weekend, a group of U.S. Senators stood in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and did something remarkable: they publicly accused their own Secretary of State of lying.

Not in the polite, I respectfully disagree with the Secretary’s characterization kind of way that defines modern Congressional theater. No. Senator Angus King flat-out told reporters that Marco Rubio had described Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan as a wish list of the Russians. Senator Mike Rounds went further, saying the document looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with.

Then Rubio’s State Department spokesperson called them liars.

Then Rubio himself hopped on X to correct the record, stating unequivocally that the peace proposal was authored by the U.S.

Welcome to the Halifax Rupture.

The 17th Halifax International Security Forum has always been a gathering of the defense establishment. Hawks, contractors, NATO officials trading war stories over Maritime lobster. It’s named after John McCain, for God’s sake. The forum literally awards a prize in his honor to people who resist authoritarian encroachment.

So when the Trump administration decided to boycott the entire event in November 2025, it wasn’t just a scheduling conflict.

But a bipartisan group of Senators showed up anyway.

Jeanne Shaheen and Jim Risch, fresh off receiving the Halifax Builder Award. Mike Rounds and Thom Tillis, both Republicans who had voted for the big Ukraine aid package. Even Peter Welch, a Vermont progressive who had opposed that same package over Israel-Gaza, flew to Canada to defend Ukrainian sovereignty.

Think about that coalition. A Vermont progressive and South Dakota Republican, united to push back against their own President’s foreign policy.

King invoked Munich 1938. Tillis said Mitch McConnell’s criticism didn’t go far enough. These weren’t backbenchers grandstanding for cable news. These were senior Foreign Relations Committee members, intelligence committee veterans, people who know where the bodies are buried.

And they were completely, utterly powerless.

Let’s talk about what’s actually in this 28-point proposal.

Ukraine would formally surrender the entire Donbas region and Crimea. The southern corridor would freeze at current lines, giving Russia the land bridge to Crimea it has wanted since 2014.

Ukraine would amend its constitution to permanently forswear NATO membership. Not delay it. Not put it on hold. Never join, enshrined in law.

The Ukrainian military would be capped at 600,000 troops, a demobilization of nearly one-third of their fighting force. They would also be stripped of long-range strike capabilities.

Russia, meanwhile, faces no corresponding restrictions.

In exchange, Ukraine gets a security guarantee that is not a treaty, involves no troops on the ground, and provides no automatic response if Russia reinvades.

It’s a promise future presidents can ignore with a pen stroke.

Oh, and Russia gets readmitted to the G8. Sanctions lifted. Business as usual.

The primary U.S. negotiator wasn’t a diplomat. It wasn’t a National Security Council staffer. It wasn’t even a general.

It was Steve Witkoff... A real estate investor.

Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy, drafted the plan in Miami with Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. An entity that was, until very recently, under strict U.S. sanctions.

Not at the State Department. Not at the Pentagon... In Miami.

Like they were negotiating a distressed asset sale. Which, in a sense, they were.

Marco Rubio is now both Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor, a dual role not seen since Kissinger. That consolidation of power should terrify anyone who believes in checks and balances.

What’s fascinating is Rubio’s performance in Halifax. According to the Senators, he privately told them the plan was essentially a Russian draft, a starting point for negotiations. He was trying to reassure Congressional allies that America hadn’t gone completely insane.

Then the story leaked.

Rubio had to publicly correct the record, asserting U.S. authorship while simultaneously claiming it incorporated Russian and Ukrainian input.

Which is technically true but fundamentally dishonest. Like saying a hostage video incorporates the hostage’s input because they read the script.

Rubio, once a Russia hawk, chose Trump. And in doing so, he made the Senators look like fools.

While the Senators raged in Halifax, the geopolitical chess match continued in Johannesburg.

Trump boycotted the G20 summit, ostensibly over South African domestic policies, leaving a vacuum that Macron, Friedrich Merz (Germany’s newly elected conservative chancellor), and Starmer filled.

The joint statement from the coalition of the willing was diplomatic in language but scathing in subtext. They acknowledged the U.S. plan as a basis that will require additional work.

Translation: this is garbage.

The Europeans explicitly stated that borders must not be changed by force. A direct rejection of the plan’s territorial concessions. They also expressed grave concern about military caps that would leave Ukraine vulnerable.

And they’re drafting a counter-proposal. One that involves European troops on the ground as peacekeepers or tripwire forces.

Precisely the kind of commitment Trump’s plan explicitly forbids.

Trump gave Zelenskyy until Thanksgiving to accept the plan.

He’ll have to like it, and if he doesn’t like it... they should just keep fighting. Without U.S. aid, the fight will be short.

Thanksgiving. A deadline designed for American cable news cycles, forcing a foreign leader to either capitulate or watch his country freeze in the dark as Russian missiles obliterate what’s left of the energy grid.

Zelenskyy called it one of the most difficult moments in our history. Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called it creeping capitulation.

If Zelenskyy accepts, he faces potential domestic revolt. Ultranationalists in his own military who will see this as betrayal.

If he rejects, the Ukrainian lines collapse by spring.

If he tries to thread the needle with European help, he’s gambling that France and Germany can replace American support.

There is no good option. Only varieties of catastrophe.

The Halifax Rupture isn’t just about Ukraine. It’s about the unraveling of American strategic reliability.

Senators who control the budget, who ratify treaties, who are supposed to provide oversight of foreign policy are now reduced to spectators. The administration conducts diplomacy through executive agreements that require no Senate approval.

The Foreign Relations Committee has been reduced to a debating society.

The Atlantic alliance is being rewritten in real time. Europe can no longer assume American security guarantees are worth the paper they’re printed on. NATO’s Open Door policy is being traded away to appease Moscow.

And the global signal? If the U.S. forces a partner democracy to cede territory to a nuclear-armed aggressor, what message does that send to Beijing?

The post-1945 order wasn’t perfect, but it was built on a simple premise: borders matter, aggression has consequences, and the United States will stand with democracies against dictatorships.

That premise is now negotiable.