The Thanksgiving Surrender: Trump’s Ultimatum to Ukraine Is a Gift to Putin
A president strong-arming a besieged democracy to kneel for his own political convenience
By Dr. John Petrone
Getty Images
The Ultimatum
Donald Trump just issued the most disgraceful foreign-policy ultimatum of his presidency. He wants Ukraine to “accept” his so-called peace plan by Thanksgiving. A deadline. A date on the calendar. As if national sovereignty can be forced into a holiday timetable.
This isn’t diplomacy. It is coercion crafted to please Vladimir Putin, not protect American interests. No U.S. president has ever pressured a democratic ally to surrender territory to a dictator while Russian missiles are still falling on civilians. Yet that is exactly where Trump has placed us.
What the Plan Really Is
Take away the spin. This plan is not peace. It’s capitulation.
It demands Ukraine:
• Surrender the Donbas region
• Withdraw from areas where its soldiers are actively fighting
• Cap its military size
• Renounce NATO membership forever
• Recognize Crimea as Russian, even formally by the United States
These are Putin’s war aims, delivered through an American president. Calling it a “win-win” is Orwellian. It’s a forced kneel.
Zelenskyy’s Warning to the World
President Zelenskyy addressed his people in a somber ten-minute message, warning that Ukraine is being thrust into an impossible choice: dignity or alliance, sovereignty or survival, resistance or abandonment. His words were the plea of a nation being pressured into giving up the very land its soldiers are dying to defend.
Ukraine sees what this really is: pressure from the one country they believed would never demand their surrender.
Russia’s Timing Is Not an Accident
Missile strikes. Drone attacks. Civilians buried in rubble. Children killed in their bedrooms. All launched at the exact moment Trump’s ultimatum became public.
At the same time, a corruption scandal conveniently unfolds inside Ukraine, undermining Zelenskyy’s government right as Putin and Trump apply maximum pressure. The timing is too perfect to be coincidence. Putin knows Trump is pushing Kyiv to the table, so he is pushing harder on the battlefield.
And Trump, once again, is rewarding aggression.
The Pattern
This follows the same Trump-Putin pattern we have lived through for years.
Trump threatens Ukraine’s survival.
Putin benefits.
Democracy loses.
Trump calls it “a deal.”
This is the same president who tried to coerce Ukraine in 2019. The same president who admired Putin’s “genius” when he invaded. The same president who has never — not once — stood firmly with a democratic ally when he could stand with an authoritarian instead.
This isn’t confusion. It’s alignment.
The Real Danger
If Ukraine is forced into surrender, Putin gets everything he could never win on the battlefield. Every dictator watching learns the same lesson: hold out until Trump intervenes, and democracy will fold.
This is a global signal of weakness. And it will echo in Beijing, Tehran, and every capital where freedom hangs by a thread.
How We Fight Back
This is not just another Trump scandal. This is a geopolitical turning point.
Here’s what readers can do:
• State it plainly: America must not force democratic allies into surrender.
• Demand Congress reject appeasement disguised as “peace.”
• Support continued aid — not charity, but a defense of global stability.
• Pressure media to frame this correctly: a coerced capitulation, not diplomacy.
• Vote with full awareness of the stakes: democracy abroad begins with democracy at home.
Forcing Ukraine into kneeling before a dictator is not peace. It is betrayal. And Americans must not stand silent while it happens.
Horrifying- these people are traitors to democracy… Praying Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan continue to step in and step up!
I have no words for Trump oh yes I do he's a fat f***. Does he think that if poor Zelinskyy has to accept this that he's going to get honored with the peace award?
Why don't you send our national guard over there to help them win instead of sending them to all these cities in North Carolina and Michigan and DC to do nothing but pick up garbage and just wander around.
I am so embarrassed with our stupid administration and their lack of anything decent. All he does is create chaos chaos chaos. Somebody please put us out of our misery karma where the f*** are you??