Putin’s press secretary says U.S. handed Russia a draft peace plan that was “revised following the U.S.-Ukraine talks”

On Nov. 28, the Kremlin press secretary stated that the United States has sent the Kremlin the “key parameters” of its peace plan for Ukraine, revised following the U.S.–Ukrainian consultations in Geneva this past Sunday. According to Peskov, the document was provided to Moscow in advance, and discussions of its contents are scheduled for next week.

On Nov. 23, the Ukrainian and U.S. delegations held a meeting in Geneva that resulted, according to Volodymyr Zelensky, in an “updated and refined framework peace document.” Kyiv reported “substantial progress” and stressed that any final text must ensure a just peace and preserve Ukraine’s full sovereignty.

The revised version of the plan was produced in response to an earlier 28-point document. Over the past week, investigations and leaks published by The Insider and Bloomberg strongly suggested that the original document was developed in Moscow. Bloomberg published recordings of conversations between U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, Putin adviser Yury Ushakov, and Russian Direct Investment head Kirill Dmitriev showing that the Russian side expected to pass its proposals to the Americans on an “informal” basis and then present the document as a U.S. initiative. In one of the conversations, Dmitriev explicitly told Ushakov:

“We’ll just prepare this paper as if it were our position, and I’ll pass it along informally, making clear that all of this is off the record. And then let them [the United States] present it as their own.”

As The Insider found, the structure and wording of the leaked plan replicate almost verbatim a draft that Dmitriev prepared shortly after Donald Trump's return to the White House. That new document demanded de facto international recognition of Russia’s claims to Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, freezing control over territory along the current front line in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, Ukraine’s renunciation of NATO membership, a phased lifting of international economic sanctions on Russia, and a ban on any Western troop deployments on Ukrainian territory. It also included mechanisms allowing the Kremlin and its affiliated business entities to profit from future U.S.-managed investments in Ukraine.

According to senators privy to closed-door briefings, Secretary of State Marco Rubio privately described the plan as “a Russian wish list” that had been passed to Trump’s special envoy, Witkoff, and then forwarded to Ukraine. Later, after the public outcry, Rubio said it was “an American version.” However, The Insider’s sources confirmed the senators’ original account.

In Geneva, the Ukrainian and U.S. delegations made substantial changes to the document, reducing the number of points from 28 to 19 and removing the most pro-Russian provisions. According to Kyiv, “very little of the original version remains.” Still, the Kremlin continues to portray the process as adaptations to the American plan, even though the published intercepts attest to the opposite — an attempt by Russian negotiators to pass off their own draft as a Washington initiative.