Some brief thoughts on the recent Witkoff–Ushakov–Dmitriev leaks and the broader state of the peace talks.

1. Moscow faces a serious structural problem: whom should it actually talk to on the American side?
- Steve Witkoff is convenient and receptive to Russian ideas, but he is bureaucratically isolated and politically fragile. He takes well-known Russian positions, repackages them, and watches them die almost immediately.
- Trump himself refuses to dive into details.
- Marco Rubio is unenthusiastic about Russian input and struggles to find common ground with Lavrov.

Passing proposals through Witkoff may feel tactically easy, but it lacks any real administrative weight. The latest leaks only exacerbate this weakness.

As for Dan Driscoll, he arrived in Abu Dhabi rather naïvely hoping to meet Russian counterparts (Moscow had ignored his earlier feelers for talks with, say, Belousov). He left empty-handed because he simply wasn’t talking to the right people: the Kremlin still doesn’t know in what capacity he is acting or what mandate he actually carries.

2. There is no question that the 28-point plan reflects a large share of Russian priorities. Yet problems remain:
- Some clauses directly contradict core Russian demands (e.g., the permitted size of the Ukrainian army, the absence of a total ban on long-range weapons).
- The wording leaves considerable latitude for interpretation and risks being substantially diluted once implementation begins.

3. Moscow genuinely doesn’t know what document we are even talking about. 28 points? 19 points? The 19-point paper itself is not finalised because Zelenskyy still needs to raise several acute issues directly with Trump. The Kremlin wants an official, written text with clear status that it can work from. For now, it is simply waiting.

I see nothing at the moment that would force Putin to recalculate his goals or abandon his core demands. Those demands have remained essentially unchanged for over two years (with some adjustments, of course). He feels more confident than ever about the battlefield situation and is convinced that he can wait until Kyiv finally accepts that it cannot win and must negotiate on Russia’s well-known terms. If the Americans can help move things in that direction—fine. If not, he knows how to proceed anyway. That is the current Kremlin logic.

https://x.com/Stanovaya/status/1993783148073898427