I hope Russian President Vladimir Putin's seven-point plan for re-establishing peace in eastern Ukraine comes to fruition. It would make someone I know in Donetsk breathe easier.

After Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko rashly announced Wednesday that he had agreed on a peace deal with Putin, the Kremlin had to go through its usual charade of stressing that it cannot make such deals because it is not a party to the conflict. Still, a kind of arrangement has evidently been discussed, hence Putin's plan supposedly sketched out on a flight from Blagoveshchensk in the Russian Far East to Ulan Bator in Mongolia.

The plan begins with the "militia of southeastern Ukraine" — meaning, presumably, both the rebels and the Russian troops sent to their aid — stopping its onslaught on the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainians, for their part, would have to move their troops beyond shelling range of rebel-held cities and refrain from using their air force.