A senior White House official confirmed to CBS News on Thursday that President Trump has approved a 28-point plan to end the war Russia launched nearly four years ago with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine, however, has not backed the proposal, sources tell CBS News, which is believed to call for the current battle lines to be frozen where they are — with Russia’s occupying forces in control of a massive portion of eastern Ukraine. Mr. Trump’s endorsement of the plan was first reported by NBC.
In an interview with Axios on Monday, Kirill Dmitriev, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said he and Trump envoy Steve Witkoff had written a 28-point peace plan during a face-to-face visit last month in Miami.
Just days after the Trump administration imposed sanctions on Russian oil and gas in October, Dmitriev traveled to the U.S. to hold previously scheduled talks with Witkoff in an effort to continue to make progress on a proposal to end the war, as a senior U.S. official described it at the time.
The White House official who spoke with CBS News’ Nancy Cordes on Thursday said Witkoff had been working on the proposal quietly for about a month, consulting with both the Russians and Ukrainians to take their feedback into account.
The plan calls for Ukraine to abandon territory, give up some weapons and shrink its army, and while President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday that the war must end, he reiterated that from Kyiv’s perspective, “there can be no reward for waging war.”
Speaking with Cordes on Wednesday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said he didn’t have any announcements to share about a peace plan, but he added that it was an issue “the president has continued to put at the forefront of our foreign policy goal.”
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Amid the U.S. diplomatic efforts — which include a visit to Kyiv this week by a delegation led by the U.S. Army secretary — Russian missiles have continued to pummel Ukraine.
Rescuers were still searching on Thursday for victims of a devastating Russian strike on an apartment building in the western city of Ternopil that killed at least 26 people, including three children, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Shrieking Russian missiles slammed into the building on Wednesday, burning at least 19 people to death in the apartments.
The strike came just as the Army secretary Dan Driscoll arrived in the Ukrainian capital, one day after the U.S. greenlit a $100 million package to upgrade Ukraine’s Patriot missile-interceptor systems.
