Bulwark Takes - Confusion Erupts Over Leaked Peace Plan

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

Sam Stein is joined by Erin Banco to discuss the 28-point Russia-Ukraine peace plan and the secret Miami hotel meeting sparking confusion in Washington as officials scramble to understand how a Russia-leaning proposal came together. Read Erin’s scoop in Reuters, “Trump officials’ meeting with Russian in Miami spurs questions about Ukraine proposal”

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everybody. It's me. Sam Stein, managing out at the Bullwark, and I'm joined by Aaron Banco, who's the national security reporter for Reuters. We're going to be talking today about a really incredible scoop Aaron had. It's in Reuters, obviously, but it has to deal with this kind of evolving situation, involving the Ukraine peace plan, I should say Russia peace plan for Ukraine, that is being pushed right now. And I just say that because we're recording here Sunday at like 1230. This is probably going to be posted tonight at some point. It's dynamic. So what we say might seem a little bit outdated, but Aaron's reporting won't. Aaron, your story starts off at a meeting in Miami that has now gotten the attention of what you say,

U.S. officials and lawmakers who are, as you report, increasingly concerned about this meeting. It happened last month. Set the stage for us. Yeah. So this meeting took place at the very end of October between October 24th and October 26th. It included Jared Kushner, Steve Whitkoff, who's the special envoy. working on this peace plan and a guy named Karel Demetriov, who is Russian. He's a very close to President Putin, and he runs one of the country's largest sovereign

law funds and has been in, like, the Trump orbit since the first administration. When you say the Trump orbit, what does that mean? Like, he's just friendly with these guys? Sort of, yeah. I mean, when Trump won in 2016, Dmitriev was one of the only people connected to President Putin and the Kremlin. who tried to make inroads with the Trump team. His goal was to try to reset relations between the U.S. and Russia.

He had that infamous meeting with Eric Prince in the Seychelles that then ended up getting reported on in the Mueller report. And he also made inroads with Jared Kushner via a friend of Jared's. He drafts this sort of plan to reset relations between the two countries and hands it off to a Kushner intermediary who then gives it to Kushner. So they meet in late October. Cushner, Whitkoff, and Dimitriv, and what is discussed? So the details about the meeting are pretty scarce, but what we do know is that what comes

out of the meeting is this 28-point peace plan that then gets leaked to Axios earlier this week. So there's a lot of speculation about how those conversations unfolded in those days in Miami, including the extent to which Dmitria brings an actual proposal to Miami to get sign off from Wickoff and Kushner, or does he bring, like, bullet points? Dimitri is the guy who does this all the time. This is the way he operates. He draws up plans. He passes it around. He tries to get people to look at his ideas. I mean, this has been happening since the first Trump administration. You are certain that he came in to this meeting in October with either a peace plan or bullet points, but some sort of agenda from the Russian side for a peace deal or a diplomatic solution to

the war in Ukraine. We're fairly certain about that, right? Were there other inputs in that meeting, as in were the Ukrainians involved, were any U.S. lawmakers involved, or was it just Wittkoff and Kushner? So the Ukrainians were not at the meeting. It was just Wittkoff and Kushner. I think it's fair to say, again, we don't have a ton of details. I think it's fair to say that they go into this meeting knowing what do Ukrainians think in general about ending the war. I mean, they've been having these conversations since January, but a lot of the language that's included in the peace plan that's now out there includes demands by Russia that they've been making since January, like for a long time, right?

And the language is just very similar to what we hear Demetriov and Putin and others inside Russia talking about when they want the war to end, like they want Ukraine to give up territory in the east. They don't want them to join NATO. I mean, these are what a lot of people in D.C. define as maximalist demands that Russia has wanted for. a long time. This is what kind of stood out to people was that this 28 part piece plan, which gets kind of like divulged fairly randomly, right? Like it was just sort of out of nowhere, it seems incredibly tilted to the Russian side. And then there's a like kind of mass speculation.

Like people are running it through AI machines to see if like the rhetorical origins are Russian and things like that. Can you just sort of? I think that's happening because nobody knows how it got developed in a first. Exactly. Exactly. So just talk about the plan itself. What is the actual, what are some of the 28 points in? I mean, people are like maybe vaguely familiar with the contours of what a deal might look like. But why is the sort of overwhelming interpretation that this is a clear Russian plan? Well, it sort of gets back to the points that I was just making, right? It's like, okay, the war is going to end and Ukraine gets security guarantees. And then Russia basically gets a lot of the other demands that it's been making. You know, again, And Ukraine's not joining NATO. It cedes land that it thinks it can or claims it controls in the East.

I mean, that's huge. Caps its military at 600,000. Yeah, it capping its military. I mean, these are these are huge wins for Russia. Right. And it's a big tradeoff for Ukraine. And part of the reason, you know, you talk to people inside the White House about this and they'll say, look, you know, Russia's winning.

You know, they have the upper hand here. If they want these things, you know, Ukraine has a much. choice. I mean, like, I'm not a battlefield expert. I would say that, like, in the east, where the fighting has been very intense, Russia is on the up and up. Like, it is in certain neighborhoods and on certain battlefields winning. And I think we thought at the beginning of the year that Ukraine would have the ability to sort of stave them off. But now we're coming to wintertime. things are going to get like literally muddy in Ukraine and and it doesn't look good for Ukraine right now in the battlefields and these. And so is the perception that the administration both sees this as the inevitable outcome, but also that they're taking some sort of advantage of this window that presents itself?

Yeah, I think that's very fair. But again, like, we don't know exactly, you know, how this plan gets crafted in this hotel in Miami. And so, like, if we think back to Trump one and there would be news about like some side meeting or back channel, back channel meeting that happens where there aren't any note takers or translators or whatever, I mean, it would have been like a huge deal. But now this has just become commonplace, right? This is just like how Trump world does business. But I think what's concerning officials is like Dmitriov, right? He has been front and center in a lot of these negotiations with Witkoff. He is sanctioned by the U.S.

He's actually blacklisted by the U.S. He's had to receive certain waivers to come into the country. He's a close Putin ally and confidant. And he's just like a slippery guy. I mean, he is just very much part of the Russian apparatus. But he has a ton of business. in the West. And so he can kind of play into both circles. And so I think people are just concerned about the nature of the conversation. Well, yeah. And also the main, I mean, I get that this is

how they do business. But like, we do have a Secretary of State still. I mean, he happens to be the head of the National Archives as well. And he's got a lot of jobs. But he is the Secretary of State. And he seems to be weirdly sidelined, but also not. And so we had this incredibly odd thing that happened in Halifax last night where I'm just going to try to summarize it and you can tell me what you've heard. Marco Rubio apparently is talking to at least three senators and explaining to them that this 28 point plan is not a U.S. authored plan, or at least that's how the senators interpreted what Rubio says. They come out and say, we've been authorized to say this. Like, this is just a starting point in negotiation. It's not actually the U.S. plan.

And then the State Department spokesperson chimes and says, no, that. That's not true. This is false. And then Rubio gets on Twitter and tries to clarify it, but leaves open interpretation that it is actually not a U.S. plan. It's a starting point for negotiations. And there's this general mass confusion about what is actually happening. I mean, there's been confusion about this plan since, like, it got leaked to Axios.

But, I mean, I think there's a couple things we can say. I think it's fair to say the administration was caught off guard by the leak. I think that's super fair. I also think. Really? Yeah. Okay. I mean, we're talking to people in press shops throughout the government that first day.

I mean, no one knew what was going on. Like, no one, no one had a clear message or answer. It wasn't until the next day that they started syncing up, like, what their messaging is. And I think to a, to a large extent, the White House press shop is directing the messaging on this now. And I just, I don't know what happened on that call. Like, the lawmakers are saying one thing. the State Department publicly is saying another thing. There could have been some misinterpretation, but like, I think it's fair to say.

This is three separate senators, two, a Republican, a Democrat, an independent, who all got the same message from this call. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So I'm still reporting this out. But they're like, okay, I'm just talking in hypotheticals now. There could have been a situation where, like, Demetri of comes to the meeting of Miami. he's got like a list of Russian demands and a lot of them are folded in and Jared and Wiccoff sign off.

They say, great, you draw it up. Demetriot draws it up and like it's being passed around that small circle for some time. And then eventually Rubio's read in. I don't know when Rubio was read in. I have questions about whether or not he was even read in on that meeting in Miami. But we're still reporting that out. And then, you know, U.S. authored, what does that mean? Does it mean that like they wrote it?

Does it mean that they signed off on it? Does it mean that now we'll get it? Author, to me, means they had input on it, right? Like, that you don't, they could have said U.S. approved would have been signed off. Authored means that we had input into this 28-point plan to me. I'm sure they did. I'm sure they did. Like, this is, I don't believe that this is like, pure Russian.

It comes out of, like, the Kremlin in Moscow and is, like, just speak to Axios. Like, I believe that they're. conversations with the U.S. But that raises even more questions and concerns for officials, right? Because they're like, wait a minute. Okay, so you're saying that this is mostly coming out of Russia, but you were like in on the meeting to discuss it and approved it. And so now that means that's a U.S. authored plan. Like, there are just so many questions about how those conversations unfold. Well, the other thing about the Rubio tweet, and I just might as well, I'm going to read it. It says the peace proposal was authored by the U.S. It is offered, not authored, offered as a strong

framework for ongoing negotiations. It is based on input from the Russian side, but it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine. That last part to me is very, I mean, that's the clearest part. We worked with the Russians on this. We took into account what the Ukrainians had previously told us and continue to advocate for it. They were not at the table. He's just saying they weren't at the table. The Russians were, this is the plan. Correct. That makes sense to me. I mean, why does that make sense? I don't understand. It's a peace process.

Why would you, wouldn't you have to make a table? I'm not saying that it makes sense as in this is good. I'm saying that, you know, if this meeting only included Demetri of and not the Ukrainians, it makes sense that it would include a lot of Russian demands and probably not a lot of Ukraine, you know. Yes. Right. Like that's what I mean in terms of process. If the Ukrainians weren't at the table, then of course, whatever comes out of that meeting is not necessarily, not necessarily.

going to have what keep them wants in it, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess, so then the question now is, what is the timeline here? Because the other thing the U.S. side is saying is that Ukraine has to sign off on this thing by Thanksgiving or they're going to lose U.S. aid. And yet hear Rubio saying, well, this is a foundation for talks. Like, does that mean they have, what, four or five days to, you know, get their amendments in that that's it?

I don't know. I do know. We have sourcing that says the Ukraine were read in. after this Miami meeting. But I don't know the extent to which they were like, you know, going back and forth with the White House about what they wanted in it. I don't know if they were just briefed. It seems like it was very baseline. Here's what we have.

Let us know what you think. Now there are talks today in Geneva and we'll have to see, you know, what comes out of those, that Ukrainians are there. So it was a huge U.S. entourage. But I think it all comes down to this meeting in Miami. Like it comes down to that conversation. What happened? What did the nuclear? Sure.

But, like, they have, we're like a week out, not even until Thanksgiving. Is the expectation that there will be signatures on this thing in three or four days? I find it highly doubtful that that will happen. I mean, I don't think the Ukrainians are ready to sign off. It does give me a little bit of sort of deja vu. This is the play they sort of ran with Gaza, right? It's like, here's a peace deal. Get on board or this is it.

And they're like, just stuff it. Well, it's interesting, right? because, like, Kushner hadn't been involved in these Russian talks until a couple months ago. And so I think the president obviously trusts Jared and he has been involved with Wickoff on the Gaza talks. I think the playbook is, like, kind of similar. I should also note that Kushner's close with Dimitriov. They work together under the first administration on COVID stuff. So he has a direct line to Demetriou. I think if you're going to, if you're the president and you want to fast track a peace process, like, you're going to get probably Jared involved because he has the connection to Demetriov and he's

already working with Wickoff on the Gaza plan. Again, though, like the interagency process as it was was like completely not just like nobody in the interagency knew about it. What is it? What is the interagency process here? It's like total freelancing. The NSC is supposed to be the one that coordinates like these major, you know, briefings or meetings or cables, right? gets done in Miami hotel rooms. That's just the way it happens. Oh, and I should say, like, Demetri is holding up court in the Fianna Hotel in Miami, which is owned by Lent Blavatnik, who does business with... Now you're getting way past my understanding of shady rushing figures. So it's just like, it's all very strange. All right, Aaron Banko,

reader stuff at Reuters, especially her big old scoop. It's titled Trump officials meeting with Russian in Miami. Spurs questions about Ukraine proposal. I want to talk to your headline writer about that stuff. Wouldn't have fun in the Daily Beast Days. Thank you so much. Really appreciate Aaron. Thank you.