The Donald Trump peace plan is nothing of the sort. It takes Russian demands and presents them as peace proposals, in what is effectively for Ukraine a surrender ultimatum.

If accepted, it would reward armed aggression. The principle, sacrosanct since the Second World War, for obvious and very good reasons, that even de facto borders cannot be changed by force, will have been trampled on at the behest of the leader of the free world.

The Kremlin will have imposed terms via negotiators on a country it has violated, and whose people its troops have butchered, massacred and raped. It is without doubt the biggest crisis in Trans-Atlantic relations since the war began, if not since the inception of NATO.

The question now is: are Europe’s leaders up to meeting the daunting challenges that will follow. On past form, we cannot be sure.

The plan proposes the following:

• Land seized by Vladimir Putin’s unwarranted and unprovoked invasion would be ceded by Kyiv.

• Territory his forces have fought but failed to take with colossal loss of life will be thrown into the bargain for good measure.

• Ukraine will be barred from NATO, from having long-range weapons, from hosting foreign troops, from allowing foreign diplomatic planes to land, and its military neutered, reduced in size by more than half.

And most worryingly for Western leaders, the plan proposes NATO and Russia negotiate with America acting as mediator.

Lest we forget, America is meant to be the strongest partner in NATO, not an outside arbitrator. In one clause, Mr Trump’s lack of commitment to the Western alliance is laid bare in chilling clarity.

And even for all that, the plan will not bring peace. Mr Putin has made it abundantly clear he wants all of Ukraine.

He has a proven track record of retiring, rallying his forces, then returning for more. Reward a bully as they say, and he will only come back for more. Why wouldn’t he, if he is handed the fortress cities of Donetsk and a clear run over open tank country to Kyiv in a few years?

Since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, Europe has tried to keep the maverick president onside when his true sympathies have repeatedly reverted to Moscow.

It has been a demeaning and sycophantic spectacle, NATO’s secretary general stooping even to calling the US president ‘Daddy’. And it hasn’t worked. It may have made matters worse.

The parade of world leaders trooping through Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, lavishing praise on his Gaza ceasefire plan, only encouraged him to believe he is capable of solving the world’s most complex conflicts with the minimum of effort.

The Gaza plan is mired in deepening difficulty, and it never came near addressing the underlying causes of the war.

Read more:
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Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan in full

Most importantly, principles the West has held inviolable for eight decades cannot be torn up for the sake of a quick and uncertain peace.

With a partner as unreliable, the challenge to Europe cannot be clearer.

In the words of one former Baltic foreign minister: “There is a glaringly obvious message for Europe in the 28-point plan: This is the end of the end.

“We have been told repeatedly and unambiguously that Ukraine’s security, and therefore Europe’s security, will be Europe’s responsibility. And now it is. Entirely.”

If Europe does not step up to the plate and guarantee Ukraine’s security in the face of this American betrayal, we could all pay the consequences.

“Terrible”, “weird”, “peculiar” and “baffling” – some of the adjectives being levelled by observers at the Donald Trump administration’s peace plan for Ukraine.

The 28-point proposal was cooked up between Trump negotiator Steve Witkoff and Kremlin official Kirill Dmitriev without European and Ukrainian involvement.

It effectively dresses up Russian demands as a peace proposal. Demands first made by Russia at the high watermark of its invasion in 2022, before defeats forced it to retreat from much of Ukraine.

Ukraine war latest: Kyiv receives US peace plan

Its proposals are non-starters for Ukrainians.

It would hand over the rest of Donbas, territory they have spent almost four years and lost tens of thousands of men defending.

Analysts estimate at the current rate of advance, it would take Russia four more years to take the land it is proposing simply to give them instead.

It proposes more than halving the size of the Ukrainian military and depriving them of some of their most effective long-range weapons.

And it would bar any foreign forces acting as peacekeepers in Ukraine after any peace deal is done.

The plan comes at an excruciating time for the Ukrainians.

They are being pounded with devastating drone attacks, killing dozens in the last few nights alone.

They are on the verge of losing a key stronghold city, Pokrovsk.

And Volodymyr Zelenskyy is embroiled in the gravest political crisis since the war began, with key officials facing damaging corruption allegations.

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The suspicion is Mr Witkoff and Mr Dmitriev conspired together to choose this moment to put even more pressure on the Ukrainian president.

Perversely, though, it may help him.

There has been universal condemnation and outrage in Kyiv at the Witkoff-Dmitriev plan. Rivals have little choice but to rally around the wartime Ukrainian leader as he faces such unreasonable demands.

The genesis of this plan is unclear.

Was it born from Donald Trump’s overinflated belief in his peacemaking abilities? His overrated Gaza ceasefire plan attracted lavish praise from world leaders, but now seems mired in deepening difficulty.

The fear is Mr Trump’s team are finding ways to allow him to walk away from this conflict altogether, blaming Ukrainian intransigence for the failure of his diplomacy.

Mr Trump has already ended financial support for Ukraine, acting as an arms dealer instead, selling weapons to Europe to pass on to the invaded democracy.

If he were to take away military intelligence support too, Ukraine would be blind to the kind of attacks that in recent days have killed scores of civilians.

Europe and Ukraine cannot reject the plan entirely and risk alienating Mr Trump.

They will play for time and hope against all the evidence he can still be persuaded to desert the Kremlin and put pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war, rather than force Ukraine to surrender instead.

A former Jamaican Olympic sprint athlete has described the destruction left by Hurricane Melissa as like a “world war, where somebody drops a bomb”.

The category 5 hurricane made landfall in Jamaica at the end of October with wind speeds of 185mph, making it the worst storm to hit the Caribbean country since records began. It then went on to impact Haiti and Cuba.

Speaking exclusively to Sky News, Asafa Powell, alongside American Olympic gold medallist Noah Lyles, described the aftermath of the worst natural disaster to hit Jamaica and why they have teamed up to provide relief to those most affected.

“I think the world is mourning for Jamaica right now and I am mourning for Jamaica,” Powell said.

“My heart is just crying every day when I see the videos. It doesn’t do it justice.

“You have to see it in person, when you see it in person… there’s no greenery, everything is just brown. It’s like a world war, where somebody drops a bomb, that’s what it looks like.”

Powell represented Jamaica at four Olympics over his career – beginning in 2004 in Athens.

Despite not winning individual gold at an Olympics or World Championships he claimed gold as part of the 4x100m relay team, which included Usain Bolt at the Rio Games in 2016.

Individually he set the 100m world record twice, clocking 9.77 seconds in 2005 and then 9.74 in 2007.

The latest official figures from the Jamaican government on Wednesday confirmed 45 deaths with 15 people still missing.

Lyles, who won gold in the 100m in a photo finish by 0.005 seconds and bronze in the 200m sprints at the Paris Olympics in 2024, explained why his charity – the Lyles Brothers Sports Foundation – wanted to support the Jamaican people.

“We know that there are tonnes of people who are helping out right now, and there are other foundations that you can go to, but we really wanted to make sure that not just Junelle’s [Junelle Bromfield] community but a lot of the other communities surrounding that area got support,” Lyles said.

After the Paris Olympics, the 28-year-old announced his engagement to fellow sprint athlete and Jamaican-born Junelle Bromfield in October 2024 in a social media post.

He said: “As Junelle says, St Elizabeth is the Bread Basket Parish. It provides food to the rest of the island. And if you don’t have food, then it doesn’t matter if you make it to the next day, you need something to eat, you need something to drink, you need to be able to keep the energy and the spirits up.”

Read more:
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Before and after images show Hurricane Melissa destruction

After making landfall, the Jamaican government formally declared the island a disaster area, saying almost every parish had reported blocked roads, fallen trees and major flooding.

The World Bank estimates the physical damage from Hurricane Melissa to Jamaica amounts to US$8.8bn, or 41% of Jamaica’s 2024 GDP. The impact of that damage was witnessed firsthand by Powell.

He said: “I wanted to see, just to get a visual of everything that’s going on, what’s happened on the island. I drove to Montego Bay, Westmoreland, St Elizabeth, and to be honest, I was scared, I was so shocked.

“I was scared to look left or right because there were just people on both sides of the road hoping that help was coming.

“People with kids, young babies, and it was devastating for me. I see houses under water, you know, three-storey houses, you see places where houses used to be… and it’s really bad.”

On the emotional toll it has brought to him personally while providing supplies, Powell said it was never something he thought he would witness in his country.

He said: “To see people, your people, struggling like that – never in a million years we thought Jamaica would have ever been like this and like I said, driving through it, it looked like somebody dropped a bomb on that side of Jamaica.

“Everyone is trying to help, you know, with whatever little they can help with.”

He continued: “Jamaica is very small, but it’s big in a sense, like Jamaicans say, we’re ‘likkle but we tallawah’.

“So there are a lot more communities to be touched and we’re going to get there, but it’s taking a while, but we’re getting a lot of support and I really appreciate that.”