Global & US Headlines
Trump Team, Kremlin Draft 28-Point Ukraine Cease-Fire Blueprint
On 19 Nov 2025 Axios revealed that White House envoy Steve Witkoff, after weeks of hush-hush meetings with Kremlin negotiator Kirill Dmitriev, circulated a 28-point roadmap for a Russia-Ukraine cease-fire and began quietly briefing Kyiv and European governments.
Focusing Facts
- Witkoff and Dmitriev held a three-day session in Miami (24-26 Oct 2025) to hammer out the draft before sharing it with Ukraine’s security chief Rustem Umerov this week.
- The proposal, modeled on Trump’s recent 20-point Gaza truce, clusters into four buckets: peace terms, security guarantees, pan-European security architecture, and future U.S. ties with Kyiv and Moscow.
- A planned 19 Nov 2025 meeting between Witkoff and President Zelensky in Türkiye was postponed amid Kyiv’s domestic political turmoil.
Context
Secret bargaining between great-power envoys evokes Henry Kissinger’s back-channel talks that produced the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, when Washington sought an exit while adversaries sensed leverage on the battlefield. As in Yalta 1945 or Helsinki 1975, the draft implicitly re-opens the question of Europe’s security order—this time acknowledging Russia’s seat at the table rather than treating it as a pariah. The move reflects a decades-long drift from post-Cold-War triumphalism toward messy multipolar deal-making: sanctions fatigue, stretched U.S. resources after Gaza, and Europe’s war-wariness converge to make compromise marketable. If the blueprint matures into a settlement, historians may mark it as the moment Washington tacitly accepted a sphere-of-influence logic it once rejected; if it fails, it becomes another stillborn plan like the 2008 Medvedev proposal for a new European security treaty. Either way, it signals that, a century after Wilsonian idealism, pragmatic realpolitik still shapes how wars end—or don’t.
Perspectives
Russian state-owned media
e.g., RT, TASS — They frame the 28-point roadmap as long-overdue recognition of Moscow’s security demands and signal optimism that Washington is finally treating Russia as a legitimate partner in shaping Europe’s future. By stressing battlefield “successes” and downplaying Ukrainian agency, the coverage seeks to portray Russia as negotiating from a position of strength and to legitimise any settlement that freezes current territorial gains.
Ukrainian national media
e.g., Українська правда — They report the secret talks with a note of alarm, underscoring that key questions such as Russian-occupied territory remain unresolved and warning that Kyiv and its European partners may resist a deal brokered largely over their heads. The coverage tends to spotlight risks to Ukrainian sovereignty and emphasise Russian advances, reflecting a domestic audience wary of any compromise that might reward aggression.
International general-interest outlets relying on wire services
e.g., Economic Times, Anadolu Ajansı — They present the plan as another high-profile diplomatic gambit by President Trump, echoing U.S. officials’ language about ‘stopping the senseless war’ while largely repeating Axios and White House talking points. By focusing on Trump’s brokerage role and omitting detailed scrutiny of contested issues, these reports risk amplifying administration spin and underplaying the obstacles that could derail the initiative.