US hands Putin draft peace plan – media
In early January, the American side handed Vladimir Putin a draft peace plan, Bloomberg reports, citing informed sources.
"Putin received a draft of the peace plan earlier this month via his aide Kirill Dmitriev that had been coordinated with Ukraine and European counterparts, according to people familiar with the matter. The documents were passed to Moscow informally for review, allowing Putin to prepare feedback and propose changes ahead of an expected visit by Witkoff and Kushner, who’s Trump’s son-in-law," the report notes.
The Kremlin viewed the proposal as a significant step forward, the people said, even though it fell short of a finalized agreement. Many issues of interest to Moscow were either missing or framed in ways the Kremlin found unsatisfactory. Still, the inclusion of those topics and the fact that work had begun on them was seen as positive.
Russia believes Kushner, who joined Witkoff at talks with Putin in Moscow last month, helped structure the negotiation process and establish a framework guiding the discussions, the people said.
Kremlin officials are placing particular value on what they view as a US readiness to recognize Crimea and other Ukrainian territories as under Russian control. That’s a priority for Putin, prompting him to proceed cautiously and signal openness to limited compromises, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, asking not to be identified discussing internal policy.
Officially, the Kremlin is still waiting for the results of the latest negotiations involving US, Ukrainian and Russian officials to be presented to Putin. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters Tuesday that Russia hasn’t “received any recent documents” on talks conducted in recent weeks.
Putin is expected to insist that what Moscow calls the “Anchorage understandings” reached at his August summit with Trump in Alaska remain part of any peace plan. Russia is seeking under that proposal to gain the whole of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, while fighting would be frozen along the current lines of contact in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia.
Ukraine rejects demands to withdraw its forces from heavily-fortified areas of Donetsk that Putin’s military has failed to occupy in fighting that stretches back to 2014.
US proposals have suggested turning the unoccupied area into a de-militarized or free economic zone under special administration. It’s unclear whether that land would be recognized as Russian under those plans and what, if any, concessions Moscow is prepared to offer in return.
Kyiv is working out robust security guarantees with its US and European partners to deter any future Russian attacks.