Trusting, gullible Uncle Sam is being duped again! It has been barely three months since Vladimir Putin tricked United States President Donald Trump into thinking he wanted peace in Ukraine during a much-touted summit in Alaska. President Trump still has not learned his lesson.

Axios is reporting that President Trump’s primary peace negotiator, Steve Witkoff, has finally hammered out a peace agreement with Russia, and the U.S. is pressuring Ukraine to take it.

Witkoff’s 28-point plan calls on Ukraine to abandon territory, give up weapons, and shrink its military in return for the U.S. promising to defend it. America has made such guarantees in the past, yet they didn’t stop Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Both President Trump and his envoy are exhibiting extraordinary naivety in thinking Putin will agree to long-term peace in Ukraine in return for some territory in Donbas. In 2005, Putin famously described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” And in 2008, he told President George W. Bush, “Ukraine is not even a country.” Putin does not want peace in Ukraine—he wants a piece of Ukraine, a big piece.

The Russian State Duma has formally annexed 20 percent of Ukraine, and Putin will not give up that conquered territory. If Ukraine’s government caves to President Trump’s peace demands, Putin may pretend to give up his ambition to control some of this territory while Ukraine shrinks its military. But the fighting will resume until either Putin conquers the entire nation or his military is stopped by something stronger than words and parchment guarantees.

“Putin has long known that if Ukraine allied with Europe, it would significantly diminish his power,” my father, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry, writes in The Prophesied ‘Prince of Russia.’ “His goal is to resurrect the Soviet empire. The architecture of that empire was built around Ukraine being a part of it. Ukraine is the breadbasket of Russia.”

We have to understand how important conquering Ukraine is to Russia and to Putin. Putin is manipulating Donald Trump and Steve Witkoff to weaken Ukraine because he knows America lacks the will to stop him. President Trump wants to focus on threats to the U.S. in Latin America, so he is trying to push through a peace deal in Ukraine that makes him look like a diplomat while allowing him to use American resources to accomplish other goals. This means the Ukrainian government will have to find another ally if it wants to continue fighting Russia much longer.

The name Ukraine means “steppe frontier” or “steppe borderland,” and Bible prophecy indicates that it will indeed be the border between two powerful empires—a 10-nation European empire led by Germany (Revelation 17) and a multination Asian confederation led by Russia (Ezekiel 38). This means that Ukraine may well end up being split down the middle into a pro-European and a pro-Russian state. The pro-European part will be protected not by the U.S. but by Europe.

Only time will tell where the dividing line will be drawn. Russia may well fight to try to get all of Ukraine. The late Trumpet writer Ron Fraser, who taught International Relations at Herbert W. Armstrong College, felt the line would naturally be the Dnieper River, which cuts right through the country. “Ukraine’s future is held in the balance,” he and Ryan Malone wrote in “Drawing the Line.” “But not for long. Soon the line will be drawn between rising imperial Russia and the eastward spreading, reviving, old Holy Roman Empire, in its present guise of the EU.”

President Trump’s 28-point peace plan does not signal a new era of peace in Ukraine. Rather, it signals America’s withdrawal from Eastern Europe. A revived Holy Roman Empire will fill the void. Putin is just playing for time in a ruse to get the U.S. out of this conflict once and for all.

My father has written, “In the 1990s, Germany led Europe, the U.S. and the United Nations to rip the Balkans away from the former Soviet Union. It is highly probable that, at some point, Germany made a deal with Russia not to intervene in Putin’s conquest of Ukraine.” Nevertheless, prophecy is clear that at some point, there will be direct conflict between a Russian-led Asian alliance and a unified Europe.

President Trump has “peace derangement syndrome,” the notion that anything can be solved with dialogue and dealmaking. In reality, you simply cannot negotiate with people who have a mindset like Vladimir Putin. This is why Isaiah prophesied that “the ambassadors of peace shall weep bitterly” (Isaiah 33:7). Their naive hopes are misplaced.

America’s leaders today trust their own negotiating ability more than they trust God. They are in for a rude awakening. President Trump believes he has made a deal that will ensure peace in Ukraine, but Ukraine is about to be ripped apart!