POLITICS
Since it was first published on Nov. 20, the much-discussed 28-point plan for ending the war in Ukraine has borne all the signs of a Kremlin information operation. In fact, many of its most controversial conditions were contained in a document that sources discussed with The Insider several months ago. Now, as Donald Trump's Thanksgiving Day deadline for a decision from Volodymyr Zelensky approaches, fresh leaks show how the details of the plan were discussed — in conversations between Russian and American representatives, and amongst high-ranking Russian officials themselves. Kyiv, for its part, has shown a willingness to accept most of the points contained in the original document while calling for negotiations around several of the “peace plan's” transparently unacceptable clauses.
The 28-point plan adopted by the Trump White House for ending the war in Ukraine, allegedly written by American negotiators with “input” from Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a Kremlin insider, is in fact at its core a recycled Russian document that The Insider was shown several months ago by a source close to the Russian government.
As reported by Axios and the Wall Street Journal, the 28-point U.S. plan, which was heavily tilted toward Moscow, has caused an international crisis amid fears that the Trump administration is pushing a pro-Russian agenda while attempting to force Ukraine to capitulate. The document was said to be a monthlong joint effort by three figures: U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Dmitriev.
A number of key concepts of the plan that leaked to the U.S. press on Nov. 18 are in fact pulled from the prior draft, which was written by Dmitriev not long after Trump returned to the White House in late January 2025. They include:
- De facto U.S. recognition of Russian-occupied Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk (seen as a Russian climb-down from the more binding de jure recognition of those territories);
- A freezing of territories along the current contact line in the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions;
- A sequenced process for lifting sanctions on Russia;
- Acceptance of Ukraine into the European Union;
- Permanent exclusion of Ukraine from NATO;
- A prohibition on Western or NATO peacekeepers in Ukraine;
- A scheme whereby the U.S. profits from frozen Russian assets held by the European Union while also investing in postwar Ukraine, as well as an invitation to the US to invest in Russia.
The most uncanny similarity concerns that last point:
“$100 billion in frozen Russian assets will be invested in US-led efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine,” the 28-point plan reads. “The US 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. Frozen European funds will be unfrozen.”
“The oligarchs will still get a chance to get their returns as investors in Ukraine,” the Russian source who showed The Insider the first iteration explained. The assets wouldn't be lost, in other words, but merely redirected into future business opportunities to enrich Putin’s billionaire cronies.
The Russian concept also included two “sweeteners” intended to appeal directly to the transactionally-minded Trump White House. Both were remarkable, but only one was replicated in the plan leaked to the American media.
The first was that the U.S. would invest in Russia’s postwar economy, which was expected to be “cash-strapped and in dire need of investment” following the total pivot to military production after the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This, the source explained, would usher in a “new… era for U.S.–Russian inward investments, similar to the 90s.”
This is reflected in the 28-point plan as follows: “The remainder of the frozen Russian funds will be invested in a separate U.S.-Russian investment vehicle that will implement joint projects in specific areas. This fund will be aimed at strengthening relations and increasing common interests to create a strong incentive not to return to conflict.”
The second disclosure in the first plan is wholly absent from the Witkoff-Kushner-Dmitriev one. The Insider’s source summarized it as, “We’d be willing to trade China for the U.S.,” adding that the Russian elites are “pissed off at China’s growing role in the civilian economy, taking advantage of the gaps left by the exodus of Western investors.” Given Trump’s well-known great-power competition with Beijing, the offer was for a coalition against the rising Asian superpower, described by the source as a “sort of a new Christian coalition.” This appeared to cater to the common MAGA refrain for abandoning Ukraine — that Washington should focus its military and diplomatic efforts on countering Beijing’s rise as a global superpower. The provision was likely removed because Russia did not want to hint that it would ever break with its most important strategic ally.
Going all the way back to January, when Trump returned to the White House with promises to end the war “in twenty-four” hours, the diplomatic process has been marked by volatile plot twists.
The current 28-point plan is imbued with that chaos. The Journal reported on Nov. 24 that Witkoff and Kushner wrote their first draft “[o]n a flight back from the Middle East, in the afterglow of brokering a deal between Israel and Hamas,” and that they worked out the details in concert with Dmitriev, who traveled to Miami in October for meetings with both Americans. The “majority” of the plan was written by Witkoff and Kushner, the broadsheet stated, citing a “person familiar with its drafting.”
However, in spite of an evolving and contradictory narrative as to how this peace framework got carpentered together, The Insider can reveal that the document contains specific language that appeared almost exactly word-for-word in an earlier text — one drafted solely by Dmitriev not long after Trump’s second inauguration. The aim of that initial document, according to the source who described it, was to present the incoming U.S. president with a grand bargain that locked in place Russia’s maximalist demands, often described by the Kremlin as the “root causes” of the war: namely, relitigating the American-led post-Cold War security architecture for Europe, which has been in place for the last 34 years. The packaging of this bargain was meant to appeal to the Trump administration’s well-known biases and proclivities for quid pro quo dealmaking, even if what is being traded does not belong to Russia or the United States.
Those proclivities were on full display in an October 14 phone conversation between Witkoff and high-ranking Russian diplomat Yuri Ushakov, the transcript of which made its way into the pages of Bloomberg on the afternoon of November 25.
In that conversation, which took place two weeks after the Trump-brokered Gaza peace plan was announced, Witkoff advised Ushakov on the approach Putin should take when speaking with his American counterpart.
High-ranking Russian diplomat Yuri Ushakov gives commentary to Kremlin-friendly journalists earlier this month.
“I would make the call and just reiterate that you congratulate the president on this achievement, that you supported it, you supported it, that you respect that he is a man of peace and you’re just, you’re really glad to have seen it happen,” Witkoff said, adding that the coming days presented the perfect time for the Kremlin to deliver such a message. “Zelensky is coming to the White House on Friday [October 17],” Witkoff said. “I will go to that because they want me there, but I think if possible we have the call with your boss before that Friday meeting.”
“Here’s what I think would be amazing,” Witkoff then added. “Maybe he says to President Trump: you know, Steve and Yuri discussed a very similar 20-point plan to peace and that could be something that we think might move the needle a little bit, we’re open to those sorts of things.”
On October 16, at Russia’s request, Trump and Putin held a call that lasted for more than two hours. The meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart the following afternoon was reportedly testy. A week later, Trump dispatched Witkoff to Miami to meet with Dmitriev personally.On Oct. 29, according to another transcript published by Bloomberg, Dmitriev and Ushakov spoke by phone in Russian and debated how strongly Moscow should push for its demands in any peace proposal:
Dmitriev: No, listen. I think this document, we'll just make it, like, in our position, and I'll just informally pass it on directly, saying that all of this is informal. And they can present it as their own. But I don't think they'll take exactly our version, but at least it will be as close to it as possible. [Note: The translation in bold is The Insider’s, based on the original Russian transcript as published by Bloomberg. It differs slightly from Bloomberg’s translation.]
Ushakov: Well, that's exactly the point. They might not take and say that it was agreed with us. That's what I'm afraid of.
Dmitriev: No, no, no. I'll say it exactly as you say it, word for word.
Ushakov: They might twist it later, that's all. There is that risk. There is. Well, alright, never mind. We'll see.
Much like the politically inexperienced Wikoff, Dmitriev is also seen as an interloper in the diplomatic game. However, his reputed ties to the Russian security services — along with his wife’s ties to Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova — help explain his sudden rise to relevance in Moscow. “Kirill showed no brilliance but was willing to take credit for other people's work and use name-dropping and networking to advance himself,” a source close to Dmitriev told The Insider. “Given his background, shouldn't have received Russian clearance or been mandated to negotiate, but he's part of the family now and exceptions are being made, just like in the Trump White House.”
Unsurprisingly, when the fruits of Dmitriev’s labor were first made public, the response from Kyiv was less than approving. Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya tweeted in response to the initial Axios article that the rumored 28-point “peace deal” reminded him of Soviet active measures — the “planned manipulation of information to influence people's thoughts and emotions…to sow panic, to divide society.”
En route to Geneva to negotiate the framework with an anxious Ukrainian delegation (and with a collection of completely blindsided Europeans), U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called a handful Senators, including Mike Rounds (R-SD) and Angus King (I-ME), who were participants at the Halifax Security Forum. Rubio allegedly told them the plan was not an adopted U.S. protocol but simply a “Russian wish-list.” The senators gave a live press conference recounting Rubio’s comments.
Confronted with those disclosures, Rubio later tweeted that it was indeed a “U.S. plan.” However, two sources familiar with the details of the call have told The Insider that the senators’ account was accurate. (None of them has repudiated their original representation of what Rubio said.)
During the first day of talks in Switzerland, Rubio watered down the codified nature of the plan, referring to it as a “living, breathing document” and a “foundation of input from all the relative parties.” This language was echoed by Trump, who told reporters at the White House that the framework was not his “final offer” to Kyiv.
In consultation with the Ukrainian and European delegations, the 28 points were subsequently reduced to 19, with some of the most pro-Russian provisions reportedly removed. Under the revised framework, matters of territorial concessions and NATO membership would be left for future discussion between Trump and Zelensky.
Kyslytsya, now the Ukrainian deputy foreign minister, told the Financial Times on Nov. 24 that the revised 19-point plan his delegation in Geneva helped hammer out was a marked improvement on Dmitriev’s. “Very few things are left from the original version,” he said.