US peace plan for Ukraine drew from Russian document, sources say
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The "non-paper" contained language the Russian government had previously put forward at the negotiating table.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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WASHINGTON – The US-backed 28-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, which became public last week, drew from a Russian-authored paper submitted to the Trump administration in October, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
The Russians shared the paper, which outlined Moscow’s conditions for ending the war, with senior US officials in mid-October, following a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, the sources said.
The paper, a non-official communication known in diplomatic parlance as a “non-paper”, contained language that the Russian government had previously put forward at the negotiating table, including concessions that Ukraine had rejected such as ceding a significant chunk of its territory in the east.
This is the first confirmation that the document – whose existence was initially reported by Reuters in October – was a key input in the 28-point peace plan.
The US State Department and the Russian and Ukrainian embassies in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
The White House did not comment directly on the non-paper but cited Mr Trump’s comments that he was optimistic about the 28-point plan’s progress.
“In the hopes of finalising this Peace Plan, I have directed my Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with President Putin in Moscow and, at the same time, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll will be meeting with the Ukrainians,” Mr Trump wrote.
It is unclear why and how the Trump administration had come to rely on the Russian document to help shape its own peace plan.
Some senior US officials who reviewed it, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, believed the demands made by Moscow would likely be rejected outright by the Ukrainians, the sources said.
Scepticism over Russian influence
After the paper’s submission, Mr Rubio held a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during which the paper was discussed, the sources said.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva this week, Mr Rubio acknowledged receiving “numerous written non-papers and things of this nature”, without elaborating.
Since the peace plan was first reported by Axios last week, scepticism has mounted among US officials and lawmakers, many of whom see the plan as a list of Russian positions and not a serious proposal.
The US has put pressure on Ukraine, nonetheless, warning it could curb its military assistance if Ukraine did not sign.
The plan was composed at least in part during a meeting between Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds, in Miami in October.
Few inside the State Department and White House were briefed on that encounter, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
On Nov 25, Bloomberg reported that Mr Witkoff had offered advice to high-ranking Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov regarding how Russian President Vladimir Putin should speak to Mr Trump.
According to call transcripts obtained by the news agency, Mr Ushakov and Mr Witkoff alluded to a possible “20-point plan” as early as Oct 14. The scope of that plan apparently widened during subsequent conversations with Mr Dmitriev, it added.
Plan revised after global backlash
The US proposal, which caught officials in Washington and Europe off guard, triggered a flurry of diplomacy across three continents.
The original plan has changed dramatically since then: Nine of the original 28 points have been cut following talks between senior US and Ukrainian officials, according to ABC News.
A bipartisan group of US senators said on Nov 22 that Mr Rubio had told them the 28-point plan was not a US plan but instead a Russian wish list, although the White House and State Department vigorously denied that Mr Rubio had characterised it as such.
In the discussions that followed, a senior US delegation that included Mr Rubio agreed to excise or modify some of the most pro-Russian parts of the plan during meetings in Geneva with European and Ukrainian officials.
Mr Driscoll is currently meeting with a Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi. A Ukrainian delegation is also in the United Arab Emirates for talks with the US team, according to a US official.
On Nov 25, Ukrainian officials said they supported the modified peace deal framework that had emerged from the latest talks, but stressed that the most sensitive issues – territorial concessions are especially contentious – needed to be fixed at a potential meeting between Mr Zelensky and Mr Trump. REUTERS
