The White House’s lead envoy is heading to Russia for a sixth time. Ukraine fears a peace that heavily favors Moscow. A leaked phone call shows the US envoy advising a Kremlin official on how to sweet talk the White House.
And Russia’s invasion -- now in its 46th month -- has pushed Ukraine’s beleaguered armed forces closer to the breaking point.
There’s a lot that happened in the six days since a US-drafted peace proposal first leaked – not to mention the circumstances under which it was drafted.
The 28-point plan jolted what until recently had been sputtering efforts to halt the Russian war, something that Trump had pledged to do within 24 hours of taking office in January.
Here’s what you need to know as of November 26, as diplomats and negotiators from Washington, Moscow, Kyiv, and many other European capitals wrangle over details over a concrete, and controversial plan.
The Main Sticking Points?
After the US plan leaked, and then was given to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader sent his chief of staff and other officials to Geneva for urgent talks with US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Zelenskyy reportedly was blindsided by the plan, which echoed most of the hard-line positions that Russia has held before the invasion.
The Geneva talks, however, produced an "updated and refined" framework – a reworked 19-point plan -- that would deliver a “sustainable and just peace,” both the White House and Zelenskyy's office said.
But Zelenskyy’s comments suggested the thorniest issues might still be on the table. That includes the fate of a chunk of the Donetsk region that the Kremlin has been hellbent on seizing.
Moscow has repeatedly said it must control all of Donetsk, one of five Ukrainian regions Putin baselessly claims are Russian. Ceding land that Ukraine’s forces have kept out of Russia’s clutches, at great cost, would be a massive concession by Kyiv and could have political repercussions for Zelenskyy.
Other pitfalls include the Kremlin’s insistence that Ukraine be forever barred from joining NATO and a potential cap on the size of Kyiv’s military.
The US draft would require Ukraine to “enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO” and the alliance to formalize a pledge that Ukraine will never be admitted.
That approach may be unpalatable for Ukraine, which wants freedom to choose its geopolitical partners – and currently has its NATO aspirations codified in its constitution.
Ukraine also wants to be able to defend itself from any potential future Russian attack.
In previous negotiations, Russia called for Ukraine’s military to be under 100,000 personnel. The initial US draft would cap it at 600,000. A European counterproposal would raise that to 800,000 “in peacetime.”
Several top Republican senators have criticized the initial US plan, including former Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
"A deal that rewards aggression wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on. America isn’t a neutral arbiter, and we shouldn’t act like one,” he said in a post to X.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt claimed there had been tangible progress, saying there were only “a few delicate, but not insurmountable, details that must be sorted out."
Sixth Time’s A Charm?
A real estate developer with no diplomatic background, Steve Witkoff is the man tapped by Trump to lead efforts to find an end to Russia’s war. He’s met with Putin five times already, traveling to Moscow on his private jet.
Some of Witkoff’s prior actions have raised alarm bells to outside observers, who fear he is being manipulated or that he misunderstands the war’s deeply intractable historical contours.
Witkoff has relied on translators provided by the Kremlin for his conversations with Putin and other officials, rather than using translators authorized by the US Embassy.
After Witkoff’s last meeting with Putin in August, US and European officials said the envoy misunderstood the geography of Ukrainian territory Putin was claiming.
Representative Don Bacon, a Republican who has criticized the Trump administration’s engagement with Russia, called for Witkoff to be fired.
Sending Witkoff back to Moscow, a visit Kremlin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov confirmed would happen next week, is a sign that the White House is eager to cement some or all of the points that were set in Geneva and Abu Dhabi.
Another wild-card: Trump mentioned his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, might accompany Witkoff, something neither Ushakov nor Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov commented on.
Kushner was reportedly present for previously undisclosed US meeting involving Witkoff and Russian who is also not a diplomat but who has played a starring, unconventional role in negotiations with the Americans: Kirill Dmitriev.
Wait, A Leaked Phone Call?
In late October, Dmitriev, a sharp-tongued, Harvard-trained businessman who heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, traveled to Miami, Florida. He met with Republican Representative Anna Luna, giving her what he said were undisclosed Russian files on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also gave her a box of chocolates and a book of Putin quotes.
Dmitriev had been blacklisted in 2022, along with other Russian officials, in punishment for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Trump's Treasury secretary has called him a "Kremlin propagandist."
It later emerged that Dmitriev, who was given an exemption by US authorities to travel, had secret meetings with Witkoff and Kushner while in Miami— reportedly leaving some White House and State Department officials in the dark.
After news of the US proposal emerged last week, several US senators said that Rubio told them the draft was Russian in nature, influenced by a Russian, though Dmitriev was not named.
Rubio, who was in Geneva, insisted it was a US draft.
On November 25, not long before Trump announced Witkoff would travel to Moscow, Bloomberg News published a transcript of what it said was telephone call between Witkoff and Ushakov, held about two weeks before Witkoff met Dmitriev in Miami.
According to the transcript, Witkoff advised Ushakov on how to charm Trump on a possible peace deal.
“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. So I would say that,” Witkoff was quoted as saying.
“I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere,” Witkoff reportedly said.
Bloomberg did not say how it obtained the recording, which was likely made by US intelligence agencies who routinely monitor and eavesdrop on foreign officials’ conversations. RFE/RL could not independent verify the transcript.
Trump partially confirmed the fact of the call, though not its content, saying “He’s got to sell this to Ukraine. He’s going to sell Ukraine to Russia. That’s what a dealmaker does.”
Ushakov also appeared to confirm the fact of the call, telling a Russian state TV reporter that the call was leaked to undermine the backchannel negotiations. He later told the newspaper Kommersant that his conversation with Witkoff had occurred via the WhatsApp messaging app.
“It is unlikely that such a leak could have come from the participants in the conversation,” he was quoted as saying.
