“He must have got this from K.”: How a Russian operative used the American media to bring a risible “peace deal” into existence

Concepts from Soviet military and intelligence doctrine have a bad habit of degenerating into American buzzwords, if not cliches, especially in the Age of Trump. Disinformation, which has a very specific meaning and is a powerful and relevant tool in the right hands, has, through overuse and politicization, come to mean in the popular American imagination something like, “News I don’t like” or “Facts inconvenient for ideologues on the other side.” Slightly less familiar, but still sometimes circulated by people who want to sound sophisticated when talking about foreign plots of deception or destabilization is the term active measures. Much less vogue is a concept Americans deserve to be more familiar with — because they’re victims of it all the time: reflexive control. This is the psychological trick by which the Russians get their enemies to allow the Kremlin’s information warriors to do their thinking for them, at their own expense.

Reading the news in the last 48 hours is a very good example of this theory put into practice.

Axios’ Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler reported that the Trump administration was drafting a 28-point plan, modeled on its Gaza peace deal, to end the war in Ukraine. The “deal,” per the outlet, fell into four broad categories: “peace in Ukraine, security guarantees, security in Europe, and future U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine.” The main drafter on the American side was Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy; his counterpart on the Russian side was Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund and a hyperkinetic operative who seems to understand the American political and media establishment better than most Russians do.

Attributed to anonymous U.S. and Russian officials, the story quoted only one person on the record, who told Ravid and Lawler many things, including some that were demonstrably untrue. The Russian position “is really being heard,” Dmitriev said, adding that what was up for discussion was “a much broader framework, basically saying, ‘How do we really bring, finally, lasting security to Europe, not just Ukraine.’” This proposal was taking place, Dmitriev noted, against the backdrop of recent Russian battlefield gains. He claimed to have worked out the preliminary details with Witkoff after three days spent “huddled” with the Bronx developer in Miami last month. (In reality, Dmitriev had only a few hours with Witkoff in Florida and left the United States rather ingloriously, having been denounced as an ignorable “propagandist” by U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CBS’s Face the Nation.)

Ravid caused quite a kerfuffle internationally, as he no doubt intended to. What he did not count on was that one of his most frequent sources, Witkoff, would undermine this exclusive by giving away trade secrets. The envoy accidentally tweeted under Ravid’s story what looked to be an intended direct message to a third party: “He must have got this from K.”

I saw the tweet and screenshoted it before Witkoff, realizing his technical whoops, deleted it. “K,” I assumed, referred to Kirill, the only on-the-record source for Ravid’s story — an unintended disclosure by Witkoff (himself a frequent source for Ravid’s stories). On the sly, the Russian was preemptively selling something he didn’t yet own, capably using the American media to his own political ends. More interesting was that Dmitriev’s freelancing was not being met with unmixed delight by a fatuous and impressionable U.S. diplomat.

Within hours, there was more reporting and greater kerfuffling.

The Financial Times confirmed the existence of just such a 28-point plan, along with some of the grimmer details. Ukraine would have to cede to Russia the remainder of Donbas, a condition previously deemed a non-starter by Kyiv and certified as such by a mapping-tossing Trump, who tried to sell that plan to Zelensky when the Ukrainian president was last in Washington. Kyiv would have to cut the size of its standing army in half. It would have to forfeit certain weapons systems, especially long-range missiles that can reach Russia, and reduce its dependency on U.S. security assistance. Also, no foreign troops would be allowed on Ukrainian soil. The Russian language and Russian Orthodox Church would also be guaranteed respectable status. All of these provisions, needless to add, are longstanding maximalist Russian demands, which the U.S. had previously rejected, most recently after Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s fruitless discussion with Sergei Lavrov in preparation for the now-scotched Budapest summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

There was no mention of what Ukraine would get from this grand bargain, which seemed to be the point of emphasis in all the leaks. It was a Russian wish-list.

NBC News and the Wall Street Journal both noted that while Witkoff may have been driving the car, he had co-passengers. The plan, now described as a “blueprint” for ending the war, “was worked out” by Rubio, Witkoff, and Jared Kushner, according to the Journal, citing unnamed U.S. officials. NBC reported that the president “this week approved” all 28 points, citing one unnamed “senior administration official.”

What struck me as odd about this whole affair was that for such a multi-authored, monthlong project, no one from the American side was willing to go on the record to talk about it. Everything was on-background comment — except for Dmitriev, who was only too happy to gibber. Moreover, the State Department was silent; all journalist inquiries directed at Foggy Bottom were not even redirected to the White House, which is highly abnormal on matters of foreign policy sensitivity. Then, late Wednesday night, Rubio, under his personal account, tweeted this: “Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas. And achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

To anyone on nodding terms with diplomatese, this sounded like the whirr of the backpedal, Rubio’s way of trying to downplay expectations created by Dmitriev and Axios and the resulting press frenzy. An “extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas” was not, after all, a signed, sealed, and delivered plan of action, which Politico’s Dasha Burns had described (citing a “senior White House official”) as a “fait accompli,” cobbled together without the input or consent of Brussels. “We don’t really care about the Europeans,” said that same senior White House official, even though the EU and NATO will have an outsize say in determining the future of Ukraine and Europe, from sanctions relief to security assistance.

Only a week ago, Rubio said at the G7 that Russia isn’t interested in peace and Ukraine cannot cede the rest of Donetsk to Moscow. Now he was meant to be an architect of exactly that, albeit a reluctant one, judging from his tone of voice.

For hours on Nov. 19, there was not a word from any White House official about this 28-point deal said to be blessed on high in the White House — an oddity considering the framing of it as a shakedown of Ukraine and all over but the shoutin’.

There were further oddities to the policymaking, both substantive and optical.

Let’s start with the substantive. This deal landed smack dab in a news cycle in which all developments suggested that the U.S. was sticking to the status quo of arming Ukraine and aiding at least some of its war efforts with intelligence sharing and target selection.

The State Department had just authorized the potential sale to Kyiv of $105 million in Patriot air defense sustainment. The Nordic and Baltic countries had just committed $500 million to the NATO PURL mechanism (by which Europe buys what only America makes, and donates it to Ukraine), while Poland kicked in $100 million. The UK had also recently resupplied Kyiv with Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which require U.S. technical assistance to be fired, a strong hint that the consignment must have been greenlit by Washington.

The day before the Axios “scoop,” Ukraine launched ATACMS into Russian territory, targeting the Pogonovo military training ground in Voronezh, and for the first time claimed credit for firing these long-range ballistic missiles inside Russia. U.S. Gen. Alexus “Grynch” Grynkewich, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and the head of U.S. European Command, would have okayed that salvo, as the authority for allowing Ukrainian deep strikes using Western munitions now rests with him.

Finally, the U.S. Treasury Department passed one critical early test of its sanctions regime against Russia by bigfooting Gunvor, a Swiss commodities trader that is used as Vladimir Putin’s personal piggybank. when the firm sought to purchase now-sanctioned Lukoil assets. On Nov. 6., the Treasury tweeted: “President Trump has been clear that the war must end immediately. As long as Putin continues the senseless killings, the Kremlin’s puppet, Gunvor, will never get a license to operate and profit.”

The optical oddities were even weirder. As this framework for peace in our time was breaking, Donald Trump was suspiciously silent. He’d spent 24 hours since the Axios dump ranting on TruthSocial about Jimmy Kimmel, Jeffrey Epstein, and how he wanted to execute Democrats for telling soldiers to disobey illegal orders.

Trump is not known for his judicious filtering of his thoughts and feelings on matters of great urgency. Yet there was no heralding of another Nobel-worthy intervention; no thuggish threat to Zelensky that this was an offer he couldn’t refuse; no sweet nothings to “Vladimir” for finally getting to “да.” There was nothing.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the few normie Republican Trump whisperers on the Hill — and who is usually ready to launder the president’s venality as being somehow magically in service of Ukraine — claimed to have absolutely no knowledge of any 28-point plan for ending the war. Graham would have been the first senator to be instrumentalized by the White House to do the cable news circuit to sell any viable agreement — and yet, he was in the dark. Even more bizarre was that only hours earlier, Graham had been telling everyone that Trump had authorized him to advance his dust-gathering legislation, co-sponsored with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, for imposing 500% tariffs on countries importing Russian oil, gas, uranium, and petroleum products.

Why even engage in a pantomime of more sanctions if you’re about to hand Putin the keys to the kingdom?

Moscow, for its part, was silent when it might have been giddy with excitement. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peksov said the Russian government hadn’t seen any new proposal and, the last they knew, bilateral relations with the Trumpies got frozen in Alaska in August. “What we do know comes only from media reports. There are some ideas coming from the American side, but nothing concrete has been discussed so far.” Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said much the same. The messaging from the Kremlin was that Dmitriev was off on his own adventure in the Sunshine State and everything was quite TBD.

As for the American side, where was the robust comms strategy for hawking this thing? Where was the prepping of key stakeholders to lobby for lifting sanctions as part of any peace arrangement? Each U.S. government agency was behaving as if it were not only blindsided, but simply making things up as it went along — halfhearted firefighting to put out a blaze started by a Russian operative.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv promoted on X a cringey State Department meme of Trump, captioned, “We want to help our allies. We want to change our enemies.” (By all accounts, Ukraine, an ally, was about to be railroaded and Russia, an enemy, was about to be left remarkably unchanged.) U.S. European Command, meanwhile, boosted the recent provision of Patriot missile systems via Germany — a tacit acknowledgement that Russia’s airborne savagery was unrelenting.

Was Trump really acquainted with the deal in all its details? What did his “support” for Witkoff amount to? Recall that the preliminaries for the doomed Anchorage summit consisted of Witkoff misinterpreting what the Russians were offering (easy enough to do when you rely on an SVR translator) and making it seem as if they’d conceded things they hadn’t. This caused some dyspepsia in the Oval, and Trump later “jokingly” dismissed Witkoff’s ability to parlay with the Russians.

Could this be happening again? And could it be even worse now that Trump (distracted with his imploding MAGA coalition at home, a flush-worthy approval rating, a battering at the polls on Nov. 4, and bloodlust for the domestic opposition) is too busy to care about the finer points of his big, beautiful peace deal for Ukraine? “Sure, Steve, sounds great, keep going” sounded like what amounted to the Trump seal of approval here, but we don’t know because no one bothered to ask this question (or, at least, no one managed to have it answered).

Furthermore, was the interagency process that governs all major and minor U.S. foreign policymaking, much less the settlement of the largest land war in Europe since 1945, for which the U.S. has committed upwards of $180 billion, simply humming quietly along in the background?

I emailed the White House Press Office the following questions, specifically addressing Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly:

1. It’s been reported that Steve Witkoff worked on this plan for a month and has Trump’s backing. But what exactly is the president supporting here? The 28-point plan, as described in the media, is even more of a capitulation to Russia’s maximalist demands than what was being floated months ago. It also mirrors a lot of what Sergei Lavrov apparently told Marco Rubio weeks ago, which led to the cancellation of the Budapest summit. Is the president actually aware of the details of this plan or is he just generally supportive of Witkoff’s efforts? The president has been silent on social media about this and he is usually quite voluble about media chatter concerning his foreign policy.

2. Kirill Dmitriev is playing a large role in pushing for this agreement in the press. He was the only on-record source in the Axios story, which broke the news of the agreement. Is the White House worried the Russians — or at least this one Russian — are trying to will something inchoate and preliminary into existence by playing the U.S. press corps? I note that the Russian Foreign Ministry and Presidential Administration both deny any knowledge of this plan, and some Russian analysts we have queried are suggesting Dmitriev is freelancing.

3. Marco Rubio tweeted last night from his personal account what many diplomats are saying was a walk-back of the press reports, citing the “difficult and necessary” concessions from both sides when only concessions from Ukraine have been reported. Why is Rubio distancing himself and the State Department from this plan if, as per NBC and WSJ, he was an integral shaper of it? Yesterday, State did not even redirect queries to the White House for comment, an unusual move.

4. Given that Europe is now the main funder of Ukraine and NATO allies are the ones who are buying American weapons and kit via PURL, how is it that the Europeans were completely left out of these discussions? Is there any solution to this that does not include the parties subsidizing Ukraine’s defense?

The WHPO reply, attributable to a “senior U.S. official” who did not even identify who they were to me on background, was this: “Special Envoy Witkoff has been quietly working on this plan for a month, receiving input from both the Ukrainians and the Russians on what terms are acceptable to them to end the war. Both sides will have to make concessions, not just Ukraine. The President has been briefed on the plan and supports it.”

Day two reporting was more illuminating and suggested expectations for this “framework” — or “blueprint,” or “living document,” or “draft plan” — were dropping faster than Russian oil exports.

Both the New York Post and the Kyiv Post, two exceptions in the media landscape which bothered to interrogate the provenance and publicity of this proposal, cited U.S. sources affirming that, yes, Kirill Dmitriev did plant this story in Axios in order to shape the narrative in advance of any American diplomatic jockeying. The Kyiv Post’s excellent Alex Raufoglu helpfully pointed out that his sources were people close to Witkoff, meaning that even Dim Philby understood he’d got done the dirty by his partner in crime in Moscow, the implication being that now Witkoff was racing to jam this thing down everyone’s throat before they had a chance to scrutinize the contents.

Politico now clarified that “a number of people who would have normally been informed of such a plan at the White House and State Department were also not consulted about Witkoff’s renewed push,” with one U.S. official saying there was “zero interagency coordination.” You don’t say.

The Wall Street Journal turned the dial down to room temperature, stating “The U.S. hasn’t settled on any specific blueprint and will continue to consult with the warring parties,” which rather sounds as if a “fait accompli” was more like a work in progress.

The main consultant with the Ukrainians was a fittingly strange choice for a strange series of developments: U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a former classmate and friend of J.D. Vance, who was originally slated to go to Kyiv to discuss weapons procurement and drones and other fun stuff about which the U.S. military could learn a lot by studying Ukraine’s innovation in these areas. Now Driscoll was being tasked to present the Witkoff-Dmitriev scheme to Zelensky, even though Driscoll has no background in statecraft or any known expertise in Russia and Ukraine.

Then the 28-point plan started circulating in Ukrainian media, and was verified to be the real document. On a cursory glance, it was obvious why so many in the U.S. government had been kept from seeing it. It was every bit the Russian wish-list that had been teased, but vague where it needed to be specific about Ukraine’s rights while very specific about Russia’s entitlements. Moscow’s stony posture suggests it knew Dmitriev had cooked up something too good to be true (and too good to be taken seriously).

Here are some of the lowlights, with my comments:

“It is expected that Russia will not invade neighboring countries and NATO will not expand further.”

“It is expected” is language mushier than what is in the Budapest Memorandum, which previously locked both Russia and the United States into affirming Ukraine’s sovereignty and providing it with security guarantees in exchange for its relinquishment of nuclear weapons — until one of the signatories invaded Ukraine twice. (This particular phrase in passive construction, as the Guardian’s Luke Harding observed, makes much more sense in the original Russian.)

As to the security guarantees on offer now, let’s take a look:

“The size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be limited to 600,000 personnel.”

So Ukraine’s Armed Forces, which currently stand at around 900,000 active duty and 1.3 million reservists – 2.2 million personnel total – will be cut by 1.6 million, a hollowing out of over 70%. Not quite as bad as the 200-250% telegraphed, but by no means sufficient for deterring “unexpected” Russian aggression in future.

“Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future… NATO agrees not to station troops in Ukraine.”

Russia thus dictates not only the future size of the alliance and its deployments (stationing NATO “peacekeepers” in Ukraine was an earlier proposal by Trump), but also dictates in perpetuity the will of all Ukrainians, even though their nation’s “sovereignty” is confirmed in the first sentence of this document.

“European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.”

Ukraine just inked a deal with France to buy up to 100 Rafale fighters jets and earlier inked an MOU to explore purchasing between 100 and 150 Swedish Gripens. Evidently these are to be parked on NATO tarmacs. But Ukraine gets to land her American-made F-16s at home? Also, did anyone consult with Warsaw about their new bilateral responsibilities? (This comment from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk would indicate not.)

“If Ukraine launches a missile at Moscow or St. Petersburg without cause, the security guarantee will be deemed invalid.”

So if Ukraine launches a missile at, say, Rostov or Belogorad or Nizhny-Novgorod without cause, the security guarantee is still valid? What a nice way to signpost to Russians in the regions that their lives are nothing in comparison to those of the elites living in the big cities.

“Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk will be recognized as de facto Russian, including by the United States.”

This runs counter to U.S. legislation and executive orders, including those issued by Trump in his first term, which affirms Ukraine’s territorial integrity. It also vouchsafes to Putin the fortress territories of Donetsk his army is incapable of conquering.

“$100 billion in frozen Russian assets will be invested in U.S.-led efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine… The U.S. will receive 50% of the profits from this venture. Europe will add $100 billion to increase the amount of investment available for Ukraine’s reconstruction.”

So America is to receive kickbacks from Russia for the rebuilding of cities, towns and villages pulverized by Russia, using frozen Russian money; and Europe, which has not been consulted on any of this, is to be made to spend more of its own money on Ukraine’s reconstruction. I wonder if the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund has reckoned with which of the siloviki will be expropriated here to the enrichment of the U.S. government.

“Russia will enshrine in law its policy of non-aggression towards Europe and Ukraine.”

LOL.

“All civilian detainees and hostages will be returned, including children.”

That looks like Dmitriev acknowledging that Russia has taken children hostage in this war — the foundational war crime for which Putin was indicted by the International Criminal Court. It’s probably treasonous, but who cares?

“This agreement will be legally binding. Its implementation will be monitored and guaranteed by the Peace Council, headed by President Donald J. Trump. Sanctions will be imposed for violations.”

This is the Gaza Deal Redux, and one can easily see Jared Kushner’s pawprints on it. But, as Sir Lawrence Freedom asks in his own extended annotation of the document, what happens when Trump is no longer president? Does the chairmanship of this “Peace Council” automatically pass to whomever replaces him? And what happens if that person turns out to be an internationalist Republican? Or a Democrat with a better understanding of Russia?

Kushner seems to think Russia is Israel and Ukraine is Gaza, which is why Qatar, a Middle Eastern emirate that bribes its way to global relevance, got involved in a hemisphere it has no business shaping.

One can tell the Miami Sound Machine is panicking slightly because Kushner and Witkoff are now trying to dress up their deal as robust and good for Ukraine and have taken to laundering their amended version of a “NATO-style” security guarantee through — who else? — Barak Ravid at Axios. This proposal bears not even a passing resemblance to NATO Article V and it’s all subject to the caprices of Trump, prospective chairman of the Ukraine-Russia “Peace Council,” who we’re now invited to believe might go to war with Moscow if Moscow wages “significant, deliberate, and sustained” war on Kyiv, whatever that means.

As of this writing, the Europeans are rallying to Zelensky’s defense as he delivers a somber address to Ukraine, reminiscent of the eve of the full-scale invasion, saying that the real threat now isn’t advancing Russian columns but a difficult choice between “dignity” and losing the United States. Washington has apparently threatened to cut intelligence to Ukraine (again) if it doesn’t sign on the dotted line by…Thanksgiving, is it? NATO gets less than a week to determine its final membership status and force disposition, Poland gets less than a week to park its neighbor’s jets in its hangar, and the EU gets less than a week to cough up another $100 billion? Sounds eminently doable, even if the Russian government deems this plan “not ready.” But of course, Vladimir Putin isn’t in the same hurry as Trump is to end the war.

On the other hand, what’s the rush? The American president finally emerged from his hidey-hole and told Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade: “I’ve had a lot of deadlines, but if things are working well, you tend to extend the deadlines. But Thursday is we think is an appropriate time.”