Denunciations are rapidly mounting in Europe of the ceasefire that factions within Washington are trying to broker to end the three-year NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. Behind these attacks lie bitter rivalries between Washington and the European imperialist powers over the plunder of Ukraine and more broadly over how to divide the world economy between them amid the accelerating global trade war over Trump’s tariffs.

The proposal imposes on Ukraine a US-Ukrainian “economic cooperation/minerals agreement,” expected to allow Washington to pocket a staggering $500 billion in Ukrainian revenue. It also demands US control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is currently inoperative in Russian-held territory. In exchange, it would remove economic sanctions imposed on Russia since the 2014 NATO-backed putsch in Kiev and pledge “US-Russian cooperation” on energy.

The ceasefire would not prepare a lasting peace but would freeze a war that has claimed millions of Ukrainian and Russian lives. It aims primarily to recoup the vast sums of money Washington spent on a war in Ukraine that the NATO imperialist powers lost. It does so firstly at the expense of the Ukrainian people, whose country has been shattered and whose revenues are to be looted by US imperialism. But it is also at the expense of the European imperialist powers’ ambitions to seize a large part of the mineral resources and other booty to be plundered from Ukraine.