{"id":173089,"date":"2025-11-25T03:44:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T03:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/disarray-over-leaked-us-russia-peace-plan-is-ideal-scenario-for-putin-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T03:44:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T03:44:10","slug":"disarray-over-leaked-us-russia-peace-plan-is-ideal-scenario-for-putin-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/disarray-over-leaked-us-russia-peace-plan-is-ideal-scenario-for-putin-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Disarray over leaked US-Russia peace plan is ideal scenario for Putin – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukraine has been cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and faces threat of losing its most important ally
The Kremlin has barely lifted a finger in recent days. It hasn\u2019t needed to.
The 28-point US-Russia peace proposal, leaked to the media last week, has thrown Washington, Kyiv and European capitals into disarray, creating precisely the conditions Vladimir Putin has long sought: a negotiating table sharply tilted in the Russian president\u2019s favour, with Ukraine cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and the threat of losing its most important ally<\/a> hanging over its head.
Since Donald Trump\u2019s return to power, both Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy<\/a>, Ukraine\u2019s president, have worked relentlessly to convince the US they are not the side resisting peace. For his part, the US president has oscillated wildly \u2013 blasting one side or the other with angry posts and threats.
After the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska<\/a>, which by most accounts left the US president dissatisfied, he briefly appeared to side more openly with Kyiv, accusing Russia of blocking peace. Significant US sanctions on Russian oil followed.
But last week\u2019s peace plan \u2013 largely drafted in Florida by the US property developer Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev<\/a>, the head of Russia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund \u2013 has upended that dynamic.
While the exact inception of the plan \u2013 and Trump\u2019s precise role in it \u2013 remains unclear, the US president is embracing it. On Sunday, he returned to portraying Ukraine<\/a> as the obstacle to ending the war.
The US president wrote on his Truth Social platform complaining that Kyiv\u2019s leadership had \u201cEXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS\u201d.
Moscow, meanwhile, has remained strikingly quiet. For days, the foreign ministry feigned ignorance, insisting it knew nothing of any peace initiative, before Putin himself said late on Friday that the proposals \u201ccould form the basis of a final peace settlement\u201d.
The structure of the US negotiation process works to Russia\u2019s advantage.
Washington wants Kyiv to approve the plan before a US delegation travels to Moscow to finalise terms.
The Kremlin believes any move by Zelenskyy to accept something close to the 28-point draft would trigger political turmoil in Ukraine \u2013 an outcome Moscow would welcome.
And Putin knows Ukraine cannot simply abandon the talks: it remains reliant on US-supplied weapons and intelligence and could face a catastrophic winter if its central ally walked away.
Even if Kyiv were to support the plan, Russian insiders and analysts expect Putin to demand further concessions.
\u201cThe plan may be 70% acceptable, but the rest is something Putin will not agree to,\u201d said Anton Barbashin, a visiting researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. \u201cHe will certainly say: Yes, let\u2019s work on this \u2013 here are my amendments.\u201d
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the current proposal \u2013 which she described as clumsily drafted \u2013 leaves too much room for interpretation, making it the sort of document Putin would never sign.
The proposal\u2019s vague wording on Ukraine\u2019s neutrality and Nato\u2019s future expansion, she said, would demand concrete \u201cdocuments, timelines and commitments \u2013 none of which appear in the draft\u201d.
According to Stanovaya, Putin is unlikely to retreat from his main goal of subjugating Ukraine and will instead push for a revised version of the current plan that more fully reflects Russia\u2019s interests.
But if diplomacy stalls, she said Putin would see \u201cno problem with continuing the war\u201d as the Kremlin believes Ukraine\u2019s position will worsen over time \u2013 especially if Trump follows through on threats to halt US military aid.
On Friday Putin stopped short of confirming he would sign the deal, in part, Stanovaya believes, because he is waiting to see how the apparent disagreements inside the US administration over the plan unfold.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, on Saturday stressed that the US \u201cauthored\u201d the peace plan, after a Republican senator asserted that Rubio had distanced himself from the proposal and called it a Russian initiative.
\u201cThe Kremlin is watching to see which faction inside the US administration prevails. It\u2019s far too early for Moscow to celebrate,\u201d Stanovaya said.
Ukraine\u2019s hope, as in past rounds of diplomacy, is that with its European allies it can reshape the proposal into something acceptable for Kyiv and persuade Trump to back that version.
On Monday, the US and Ukraine produced a 19-point peace plan<\/a> that is markedly more favourable to Kyiv, but deferred the most politically sensitive questions for later.
Moscow is almost certain to reject the counter-proposal, returning the process to square one.
With events moving quickly, Putin is likely to take a back seat for the moment, according to Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign policy analyst close to the Kremlin.
Lukyanov said Russia would maintain military pressure \u201cat its current level\u201d until Ukraine accepted the original 28-point plan, after which Moscow would be ready to move to detailed discussions.
\u201cThe ball is on the other side,\u201d Lukyanov added.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ukraine has been cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and faces threat of losing its most important allyThe Kremlin has barely lifted a finger in recent days. It hasn\u2019t needed to.The 28-point US-Russia peace proposal, leaked to the media last week, has thrown Washington, Kyiv and European capitals into disarray, creating precisely the conditions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":173090,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}