End the war? By giving Putin what he wants?

Trump’s 28-point “peace plan” for Ukraine was simply a Kremlin wishlist. In fact, it may even have been written by Putin’s people and then translated by the White House. Crucially, it involved Ukraine giving up territory in Donetsk that it still holds, and accepting a massive reduction in its military. It would have left Ukraine permanently vulnerable to Russian imperialism and encouraged authoritarian regimes everywhere.

By the time the Morning Star got round to commenting (26 November), Trump’s “plan” had apparently been modified to a less one-sidedly pro-Moscow framework, following the intervention of European leaders and Kyiv.

The paper’s editorial (“The labour movement must stand up for peace in Ukraine”) identified the main “sticking points” as the issues that had given Putin his excuse to invade in the first place: “the expansion of Nato, the rights of Russian-speaking people… and the deployment of foreign troops into its territory” (in fairness the editorial also included “territorial demarcation” and “the sovereignty of Ukraine” in that list).

The editorial also identified the main obstacle to peace: “Keir Starmer manoeuvring for a prolongation of the war. He is in the van of those advancing demands which are obstructions to any viable peace plan.” By “obstructions” the paper clearly meant anything that Putin doesn’t like, such as the deployment of British and French forces to police any ceasefire: “That clearly crosses one of Russia’s red lines.”

Remains

So, in essence their line remains what it has been since February 2022: Putin’s invasion may have been wrong, but it was provoked by the West and the only way to end the war is to give Putin most of what he wants. Anything else — an in particular, arming Ukraine — is to needlessly “prolong” the war.

If that message wasn’t clear enough, Andrew Murray’s Eyes Left column in the same paper described Starmer’s claim that Nigel Farage was a “friend of Putin” as a “silly jibe, more serving to underline the Prime Minister’s own commitment to continuing the war in Ukraine at whatever coast in British treasure and Ukrainian blood.” (This is not the first time that Mr Murray has expressed sympathy with Farage over Ukraine).

Worst

But the best (or worst) was yet to come: on 29 November the paper carried a piece by “former member of the Bundestag” Sevim Dagdelen that can be fairly described as straightforward Kremlin propaganda. Praising Trump’s original 28-point exercise in backstabbing as a “peace plan”, Ms Dagdelen denounced Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other European leaders for “turn[ing] US President Donald Trump’s peace plan into a war plan.”

“For in the plan, altered at the insistence of the Europeans and Ukraine, the question of Ukraine’s future Nato membership is no longer addressed.”

One doesn’t have to be a supporter of NATO to point out to the likes of Ms Dagdelen that the question of Ukraine’s membership is something to be decided by the people of Ukraine — not Putin.

But Ms Dagdelen condemned this basic democratic principle as “a rejection of a realistic foreign policy.”

By the way, Ms Dagdelen is a prominent member of Sahra Wagenknecht’s red-brown BSW, now engaged in political cooperation with the far‑right and fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD). The two parties have been drawn together by two shared positions: hostility to immigration and de facto support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Morning Star did not mention any of that, of course.