All Donald Trump wants in Ukraine is a “win-win scenario.”

That’s according to Karoline Leavitt, who issued a statement in connection with a leaked document outlining The White House’s proposal for ending the war, which is coming up on its fourth anniversary.

It’s pretty difficult to square Leavitt’s “win-win” characterization with the specifics of the 28-point plan, which reads quite a bit like what it is: A proposal written with input from Moscow.

Among other things, the document calls on Kyiv to cede the entirety of the Donbas and give up recapturing large swaths of other territory under Russian control. In addition, Kyiv would forswear its NATO ambitions and agree to cap its military at 600,000 service members.

Those demands alone should be (and probably will be) non-starters for Volodymyr Zelensky. It’d be one thing if Ukraine were defeated, but they aren’t. If they were, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.

There’s something — and you’ll forgive the semi-profane colloquialism — assbackwards about compelling the non-aggressor whose sovereignty was violated to give up hope of joining a mutual defense alliance and impose limits on its own capacity to defend against future attempts to usurp its right to self-determination.

And that’s to say nothing of Trump’s demand that Ukraine recognize their invader’s illegitimate territorial claims, even those which apply to the 10% of the Donbas Russia hasn’t actually conquered.

Both The White House and The Kremlin are cynically exploiting (a)nother corruption scandal in Ukraine, this one potentially existential for Volodymyr Zelensky’s grip on power.

Without going too far into the details, public trust in Zelensky’s down precipitously in recent months amid the disclosure of a kickback scheme involving a government official and a former Zelensky business associate who were caught on tape conspiring to embezzle tens of millions of dollars from Ukraine’s state nuclear company.

The optics are bad for Zelensky, to put it politely. Just about the last thing you need when your country’s subjected to rolling power outages is audio of people you know discussing the misappropriation of energy funds.

Zelensky did what he usually does in corruption cases: He fired people, or forced them out. Ukraine’s energy minister resigned, so did the justice minister. As for Timur Mindich, the Zelensky associate implicated in the scheme, he’s in the wind. Mindich, who’s assumed to be hiding in Austria, co-owns the entertainment studio founded two decades ago by Zelensky.

The scandal opened the door to political opposition in Ukraine, which had gone largely silent out of patriotic duty during the war. As things stand, it’s unlikely Zelensky will succeed in placating his suddenly vocal political opponents, some of whom seem more interested in contesting power than combatting corruption which, I’d gently note, is itself a kind of corruption.

As usual, no one seriously believes Zelensky himself was directly involved in the scandal, and everyone understands that this sort of corruption is just par for the course in Ukraine. With apologies — because I’m not trying to traffic in cultural criticism here — the specifics of this scandal are quintessentially Ukraine. The country’s almost synonymous with precisely this sort of scheme.

Run of the mill or not, it’s entirely possible the scandal will crescendo in an all-out domestic political crisis and you can be absolutely sure The Kremlin has people working around the clock to facilitate that outcome.

If anti-Zelensky sentiment boils over and he cites wartime exigencies in refusing whatever demands the public and an emboldened opposition are prepared to register, Russia (and Trump) would have, for the first time, a quasi-legitimate claim to brand Zelensky a dictator. (I know, I know: “Takes two to know one.”)

That’s the context for Trump’s latest “peace” proposal which, in addition to making intolerable demands of Kyiv, dangles a set of open-ended incentives for Moscow including the reconstitution of the G8 (i.e., re-inviting Vladimir Putin to G7 summits), sanctions relief, energy partnerships with the US and, ludicrously, a joint AI development initiative with The Kremlin.

In addition, the US would recognize Crimea, Donetska and Luhansk “as de facto Russian,” and ask everyone else to do the same. Not coincidentally in the context of the domestic political turmoil discussed above, Trump’s plan would compel Ukraine to hold elections within 100 days of adoption.

Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz and Keir Starmer held a call with Zelensky on Friday. They all rejected the plan for what I assume are obvious reasons, even as everyone, including Zelensky, adopted a diplomatic cadence so as not to rankle Trump.

True to form, Trump’s also demanding payment in exchange for ambiguous US security guarantees against a future Russian incursion beyond the current front lines. He also wants half of any profits associated with what’d be a sweeping reconstruction effort in the country (i.e., he wants a skim).

Some reports suggest Trump’s already threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Kyiv unless Zelensky accepts the deal, which was apparently hashed out between Steve Witkoff and Putin flunky Kirill Dmitriev.

If you’re curious as to who actually wrote this plan, note that it demands something more than a provisional acknowledgement that NATO membership isn’t feasible for Kyiv in the current circumstances. Rather, it requires Ukraine to amend its constitution to include a formal pledge to never join the alliance.