Zelenskyy–Trump Mar-a-Lago Summit Narrows Ukraine Peace Plan to Final Two Territorial Points

A major combatant announcing that a peace framework is 90 % complete evokes the 1995 Dayton shuttle diplomacy, where Bosnia’s war ended only after outside guarantors inked specifics on territory and policing. Yet, as with the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that Kyiv now deems worthless, the crux again is who will actually enforce post-war borders. Trump’s limited 15-year pledge and Lavrov’s threat to target EU troops expose the longer trend: great-power security promises have progressively shortened and grown more conditional since the Cold War’s close. In the century-scale view, this moment could either fix Ukraine inside a U.S.–led security perimeter—cementing the post-1991 order—or inaugurate a new norm where nuclear-armed states seize land and negotiate partial recognition. The talks matter because they test whether a middle-power, backed but not treaty-allied, can translate battlefield resilience into durable sovereignty without surrendering territory or sovereignty to spheres-of-influence politics.