The 28-point peace plan proposed by the United States to end the war in Ukraine, which became public last week, was based on a Russian-authored document presented to the Trump administration in October, according to three sources familiar with the matter.
The Russians shared the document, which outlined Moscow’s conditions for ending the war, with senior American officials in mid-October after a meeting in Washington, the sources said.
The document, an unofficial communication known in diplomatic parlance as a “non-document”, contained excerpts that the Russian government had already presented to the negotiating table, including concessions that Kiev had rejected, such as the cession of a significant part of its territory in the east.
This is the first confirmation that the document — whose existence was initially reported by the Reuters news agency in October — was a key element in the .
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 unofficial document, but cited Trump’s statements in which he was optimistic about progress on the 28-point plan.
“In hopes of finalizing this Peace Plan, I have instructed my special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to meet with President Putin in Moscow and simultaneously Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll will meet with the Ukrainians,” Trump wrote.
It is unclear why and how the American government came to rely on the Russian document to help shape its own peace plan.
Some senior American officials who reviewed it, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, believed that the demands made by Moscow were likely to be rejected out of hand by the Ukrainians, the sources said.
Skepticism about Russian influence
After submitting the document, Rubio had a telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, during which the document was discussed, the sources said.
Speaking to the press in Geneva this week, Rubio acknowledged having received “numerous unofficial documents and things like that”, without giving further details.
Since the peace plan was first reported by Axios last week, skepticism has grown among American officials and lawmakers, many of whom view the plan as a list of Russian positions rather than a serious proposal.
The United States, however, pressured Ukraine, warning that it could restrict its military assistance if the country did not sign the agreement.
The plan was hatched, 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 the Russian sovereign wealth funds, in Miami last month.
Few within the State Department and White House were briefed on that meeting, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
On Tuesday (25), Bloomberg reported that Witkoff had advised Yuri Ushakov, a senior Kremlin official, on how Putin should address Trump.
According to transcripts of conversations obtained by the news agency, Ushakov and Witkoff mentioned a possible “20-point plan” as early as October 14.
The scope of that plan apparently expanded during subsequent conversations with Dmitriev, the agency added.
Plan review
The US proposal, which caught officials in Washington and Europe by surprise, triggered a wave of diplomacy across three continents.
The original plan has changed drastically since then: Nine of the original 28 points were cut following conversations between senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials, according to ABC News.
A bipartisan group of U.S. senators said Saturday that Rubio had told them the 28-point plan was not a U.S. plan but rather a Russian wish list, although the White House and State Department vehemently denied that Rubio had characterized it that way.
In discussions that followed, a high-ranking American delegation, which included Rubio, agreed to delete or modify some of the more pro-Russian parts of the plan with European and Ukrainian officials.
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 American team, according to an American official.
On Tuesday (25), Ukrainian officials said they supported the modified structure of the peace agreement that emerged from the latest negotiations, but stressed that the most sensitive issues — territorial concessions are especially controversial — need to be resolved in a possible meeting between Zelensky and Trump.
