Russia responds to fledgling Ukraine peace plan
Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting on the development of ‘new territories’ annexed from Ukraine at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, June 30, 2025.
Participant | Getty Images
All eyes are now on Russia’s response to the fledgling peace plan aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, after Kiev appeared willing to move forward with a US-backed framework.
US special envoy Steve Witkoff is expected to travel to Moscow next week to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s deputy, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters on Wednesday that “the content [of the U.S. plan] He said “it will be discussed” at the meeting and claimed that Russian officials did not discuss a US-backed plan while talks with US officials were held in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday.
“As the Russian side, we have not yet discussed any document specifically with anyone… We agreed to meet with Mr. Witkoff. I hope he will not be alone. Other representatives of the US team working on the Ukraine file will also be there,” he said in comments translated by NBC News. reported by state news agency TASS.
Ushakov said Russia has not yet officially received the draft US-backed agreement for Ukraine, but has seen an unofficial version.
Regarding the plan he saw, Ushakov said that the Kremlin sees some aspects of the plan as positive, but “some of its points require serious analysis.”
Meanwhile, Putin’s Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov warned on Wednesday against making hasty conclusions about the end of the war that Russia started with its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Wait. It’s too early to say that,” Peskov told reporters. state news agency TASS reportedWhen asked if this is the closest Russia and Ukraine have come to signing a peace agreement.
CNBC has contacted the Kremlin for further comment and is awaiting a response.
Ukraine is temporarily on board
Multiple outlets reported Tuesday that a Ukrainian delegation meeting with U.S. officials in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday tentatively supported the foundation of a U.S.-backed peace plan, but key details remained unresolved.
Reports: ABC News And CBS News Both cited an unnamed US official who said the Ukrainians had “accepted” the agreement, while noting that some points still needed to be ironed out. It was not clear whether the same US official was quoted in both reports.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said later Tuesday that Kiev was ready to advance the peace framework. Reuters reportedIt refers to a copy of the president’s speech to a coalition of allied countries.
President Donald Trump said at the White House on Tuesday: “I think we’re very close to a deal. We’ll find out… I think we’re making progress.”
One Real Social post On Tuesday afternoon, Trump said “there are only a few points left in the dispute.”
flurry of speech
Trump’s post came a few days after US officials met with a Ukrainian delegation in Geneva last weekend for talks that resulted in significant revisions to Washington’s proposed 28-point peace plan.
Trump acknowledged in Tuesday’s post that the plan, widely seen as highly favorable to occupying power Russia, was “fine-tuned with additional input from both sides.”
“Our delegations reached a common understanding on the basic terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva,” Ukrainian Minister of National Security Rustem Umerov said. he said. said in an X post.
It is not certain that Russia will approve the revised peace plan, which has reportedly been narrowed to 19 points.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said any agreement should reflect the understandings reached by Trump and Putin during their meeting in August. peak in alaska.
Officials from Kyiv and Moscow on Tuesday reportedly He met with Driscoll in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
While Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Tuesday that “we still have nothing to say” and that the Kremlin was “monitoring media reports,” the Kremlin was tight-lipped about the discussions taking place there.
“We understand that negotiations between the Americans and the Ukrainians are ongoing. We understand that some corrections have been made to the published text; we understand that there are already changes to the text that we received unofficially before, but at some point the time will probably come when we will also contact the Americans and receive some information officially,” Peskov said. he said. “We have no new information at this time.”
The first 28-item plan, which Ukraine did not participate in, included controversial terms such as Ukraine making territorial concessions by handing over the eastern Donbas region, which is partially occupied by Russian forces.
The original agreement also called for Ukraine to reduce its military by 50%, among other proposals that crossed Ukraine’s “red lines.”
Trump had forced Ukraine to accept the deal by the US Thanksgiving holiday on November 27, prompting Zelenskyy to declare on Friday that Ukraine faced a difficult choice between “losing its honor and losing an important partner”, referring to the US.
It appears that this period has been removed. It was unclear how many provisions of the original agreement remained in the final version of a potential peace agreement.
