State Department officials on Saturday aggressively pushed back on claims shared by some senators that President Trump’s 28-point plan for peace in Ukraine originated from Russia and is not the administration’s position.
Earlier on Saturday, PBS NewsHour correspondent Nick Schifrin reported comments from Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Angus King (I-Maine) where the lawmakers claimed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio told them the plan was not authored by the United States but was rather “received” from an intermediary and is “essentially the wish list of the Russians.”
“The peace proposal was authored by the U.S.,” Rubio said in a Saturday night post on the social platform X. “It is 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.”
Responding to one of Schifrin’s posts which shared a comment from King saying the plan “is not of the administration’s position,” State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott wrote on X that the claim “is blatantly false.”
“As Secretary Rubio and the entire Administration has consistently maintained, this plan was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians,” Pigott said.
A senior U.S. official also told NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network, that the proposal “has always been a hopeful start to continued negotiations, and eventually the signing of a final peace agreement once and for all.”
It was previously reported that the plan was negotiated by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, a top ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Only a few senior Ukrainian officials were briefed, according to Axios, which first reported the plan. Kyiv allies in Congress were seemingly caught off guard when it was leaked.
Some Republican leaders, including Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) have panned the proposal, saying it would reward Putin nearly four years after Russia invaded Ukraine. The plan includes a provision that would place the regions of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk under “de facto” Russian control to be recognized by the U.S., among other likely nonstarters for Ukraine. There are also no major concessions required from Russia, apart from directing $100 billion in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Former national security adviser John Bolton echoed the Republican lawmakers’ comments, arguing the plan was written from “the Russian point of view.”
The Russians “couldn’t have written a better treaty themselves,” he said during an appearance on NewsNation’s “On Balance with Leland Vittert” on Friday. “I think it’s selling out Ukraine.”
Vice President Vance has defended the plan amid the blowback, saying in a post on X that “peace won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land.”
“Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote on Friday.
Officials from Ukraine, the U.S. and several European nations are expected to meet in Switzerland on Sunday to discuss the proposal in more detail.