The Kremlin has barely lifted a finger in recent days. It hasn’t 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’s favour, with Ukraine cornered into weighing terms it cannot accept and the threat of losing its most important ally hanging over its head.
Since Donald Trump’s return to power, both Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, have worked relentlessly to convince the US they are not the side resisting peace. For his part, the US president has oscillated wildly – blasting one side or the other with angry posts and threats.
After the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, 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’s peace plan – largely drafted in Florida by the US property developer Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund – has upended that dynamic.
While the exact inception of the plan – and Trump’s precise role in it – remains unclear, the US president is embracing it. On Sunday, he returned to portraying Ukraine as the obstacle to ending the war.
The US president wrote on his Truth Social platform complaining that Kyiv’s leadership had “EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS”.
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 “could form the basis of a final peace settlement”.
The structure of the US negotiation process works to Russia’s 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 – 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.
“The plan may be 70% acceptable, but the rest is something Putin will not agree to,” said Anton Barbashin, a visiting researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “He will certainly say: Yes, let’s work on this – here are my amendments.”
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said the current proposal – which she described as clumsily drafted – leaves too much room for interpretation, making it the sort of document Putin would never sign.
The proposal’s vague wording on Ukraine’s neutrality and Nato’s future expansion, she said, would demand concrete “documents, timelines and commitments – none of which appear in the draft”.
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’s interests.
But if diplomacy stalls, she said Putin would see “no problem with continuing the war” as the Kremlin believes Ukraine’s position will worsen over time – 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 “authored” the peace plan, after a Republican senator asserted that Rubio had distanced himself from the proposal and called it a Russian initiative.
“The Kremlin is watching to see which faction inside the US administration prevails. It’s far too early for Moscow to celebrate,” Stanovaya said.
Ukraine’s 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 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 “at its current level” until Ukraine accepted the original 28-point plan, after which Moscow would be ready to move to detailed discussions.
“The ball is on the other side,” Lukyanov added.
