The US-backed 28-point peace plan for Ukraine, revealed last week, reportedly draws in part on a Russian-authored document submitted to the Trump administration in October.
Reuters, citing “three sources familiar with the matter,” reported that Russian officials provided the paper – a diplomatic “non-paper” outlining Moscow’s conditions for ending the war – to senior US officials shortly after US President Donald Trump met President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Washington.
The document reportedly repeated long-standing Kremlin demands, including significant territorial concessions that Kyiv has previously rejected.
As outlined by Reuters, this is the first confirmed link between the Russian non-paper and the original 28-point US proposal.
The State Department, the White House, and the Russian and Ukrainian embassies declined to comment on the findings, though the White House pointed to Trump’s recent remarks expressing optimism about the plan.
Trump celebrated the plan’s progress on Tuesday, calling it “tremendous” and saying only a few points remain unresolved.
“I think we’re going to get there,” he added.
Some senior US officials, including US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, privately argued the Russian terms would be unacceptable to Ukraine, the sources told Reuters.
Rubio later discussed the document with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. In Geneva this week, he acknowledged receiving “numerous written non-papers,” without offering details.
According to Reuters, parts of the plan were drafted during a meeting in Miami last month involving Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Kirill Dmitriev, who heads one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds.
Few officials inside the US State Department or White House were briefed on the talks, the outlet wrote.
According to The Insider, the 28-point plan adopted by the Trump administration “is in fact at its core a recycled Russian document,” first shown to the outlet months ago by a source close to the Kremlin.
Key elements of the plan echo a prior draft by Dmitriev, written soon after Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. These include US recognition of Russian-occupied Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk; a freeze on territories along the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson contact lines; permanent exclusion of Ukraine from NATO; and a scheme for the US to profit from frozen Russian assets while investing in postwar Ukraine.
“The oligarchs will still get a chance to get their returns as investors in Ukraine,” the Russian source said, noting that the assets wouldn’t be lost but redirected to enrich Putin’s billionaire allies.
The original Russian plan also reportedly included two “sweeteners” for the Trump administration. One was reflected in the 28-point plan: investing frozen Russian funds in a US-Russian joint investment vehicle to “strengthen relations and increase common interests to create a strong incentive not to return to conflict.”
The second, absent from the leaked US version, involved trading China for the US to form a coalition against Beijing.
The Insider’s source said, “We’d be willing to trade China for the US,” noting that 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.”
Bloomberg, on Nov. 25, released transcripts of two phone conversations involving Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, Witkoff, and Dmitriev.
In the first, an Oct. 14 call with Ushakov, Witkoff advised how to present a peace deal to Trump, suggesting a “20-point Trump plan” and potential territorial compromises: “Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere.”
“Instead of talking like that, let’s talk more hopefully because I think we’re going to get to a deal here,” Witkoff reportedly said.
A second call, on Oct. 29, involved Ushakov and Dmitriev, where the two discussed an informal Russian paper to share with the US, with Dmitriev noting: “Well, I think we’ll just make this paper from our position, and I’ll informally pass it along, making it clear that it’s all informal.”
Ushakov replied: “They might twist it later, that’s all. There is that risk…Well, alright, never mind. We’ll see.”
Dmitriev called Bloomberg’s reporting “fake,” while Ushakov said: “Someone leaks, someone listens in. But not us.”
The 28-point plan has since gone through significant revisions. After consultations in Geneva with European and Ukrainian officials, nine of the original points were removed, according to ABC News.
Although a bipartisan group of US senators said Rubio had described the proposal as a “Russian wish list,” both the White House and State Department denied that he had characterized it that way.
Negotiations remain active. US Army envoy Driscoll is currently meeting Russian representatives in Abu Dhabi as of Wednesday, where a Ukrainian delegation is also holding talks with the US team.
Kyiv has indicated support for the revised framework but insists that the most sensitive issues – particularly territorial concessions – must be resolved directly between Zelensky and Trump.
As reported last week, some language in the leaked US-Russia peace proposal may have been originally written in Russian, with The Guardian noting that several phrases read awkwardly in English but make sense as direct translations.
The outlet pointed to clause three – “it is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and NATO will not expand further” – noting that the passive phrase “it is expected” feels unnatural in English but directly mirrors the Russian ожидается (ozhidayetsya).
The outlet also highlighted possible Russianisms in the words “ambiguities” – from the line “all ambiguities of the last 30 years will be considered settled” – and “enshrine” in “Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO.” These terms align closely with the Russian words неоднозначности (neodnoznachnosti) and закрепить (zakrepit’).
Another clause refers to occupied Ukrainian regions simply as “the new territory.”