The 28 point American proposal to end the Ukraine war, was loosely based on a Russian diplomat's document submitted as a working plan last October and secretly drawn up during a Miami brainstorming session that included the Russians, according to three Reuters sources.
Moscow communicated the document outlining its peace terms, to senior American officials in mid-October, Reuters claims, following a Trump-Zelenskyy meeting in Washington.
This was 'unofficial' in nature and included references that Moscow had proposed at the negotiating table, including terms and concessions which Kyiv had rejected, such as virtually handing over a large swathe of its eastern territory.
The White House had not directly commented on the story, but did cite Trump comments that he was optimistic on the progress of his proposed plan.
'With the hope that this plan will be finalised, I have instructed by special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet President Putin in Moscow, with army secretary Dan Driscoll, meeting the Ukrainians', he wrote.
It's yet to be established why the Trump government ended up using the Russian document to formulate its own peace plan. A number of Americal officials with knowledge of it, including foreign secretary Marco Rubio, possibly thought that Moscow demands pushed forward in the document, would have, in any case, being categorically rejected by Kyiv.
Concerns of Russian influence
As the Reuters sources claim, after the said Russian document was submitted, Rubio held a phone conversation with Sergey Lavrov and engaged in detailed discussions of its content.
Quizzed about it by reporters in Geneva, following talks with European officials, Rubio admitted to receiving 'multiple unofficial documents', without further elaborating.
Part of this Russian plan seems to have been drawn up during a Miami meeting in October between Witkoff, Trump's son in law Jared Kusner and head of the Russian state investment fund Kirill Dimitriev, a closed door affairs and on a need to know basis, only communicated to a handful of State Department and White House officials.
The Reuters revelations are on the heels of a Bloomberg report that Witkoff had advised Kremlin official Yuri Ousakoff about how Putin should approach Trump.
According to transcribed phone conversation, had referred to a 20 point plan since October 14, gradually extending the document following the Dimitriev talks.
Source:- REUTERS