A friendly reminder: Trump's new Ukraine peace plan is the work of two diplomatic amateurs, Kirill Dmitriev & S. Witkoff [View all]

A friendly reminder: Trump’s new Ukraine peace plan is the work of two diplomatic amateurs, Kirill Dmitriev and Steve Witkoff

6:51 pm, November 20, 2025Source: Meduza

On November 19, reports surfaced that Russia and the United States were quietly drafting a new plan to end the war in Ukraine. Later that day, several of the plan’s details became public, indicating that the proposal largely repeats demands Vladimir Putin has made of Kyiv since the start of the conflict. The new plan’s parameters were developed primarily by two special presidential envoys: Steve Witkoff from the White House and Kirill Dmitriev from the Kremlin. Meduza reviews who these men are and how they fit into negotiations to end Europe’s bloodiest war in decades.

Kirill Dmitriev
Dmitriev was born 50 years ago in Kyiv and now stresses that he hails “not from Ukraine but from the USSR.” At age 17, after hearing from acquaintances about how to apply for free education abroad, he ended up in the United States. Dmitriev received an elite education, studying at Stanford and Harvard, and began his career at the international consulting company McKinsey. In the 2000s, he worked in Russia and Ukraine. In Kyiv, he ran an investment fund controlled by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of Ukraine’s second president, Leonid Kuchma. In 2011, he became head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a state investment fund that backs “leading and promising Russian companies” in partnership with “the world’s top investors.”

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In Trump’s first administration, Witkoff played a far less visible role than he does now. But after Trump lost the 2020 election and briefly fell into disgrace, Witkoff didn’t abandon him. “When a lot of fake friends ran for the hills after the 2020 election, Steve always stayed loyal to my father and our entire family, and that is something we will never forget,” Donald Trump Jr. told CNN in April 2025. When Trump returned to the White House, he initially planned to make Witkoff his Middle East negotiator. But Trump was reportedly so pleased with how Witkoff pushed through the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas — prepared by the outgoing Biden administration in January 2025 — that he tasked him with conducting talks with Russia as well (and later with Iran). Since March, Witkoff has flown to meet Vladimir Putin at least four times.

Ukrainian officials have accused Witkoff of siding with Russia, and Western diplomats describe him as unprofessional. Reports indicate that his team lacks Russia experts, and that during talks with Putin, he dispensed with a stenographer and relied on Kremlin translators. After the Trump–Putin meeting in Alaska, which produced no breakthrough in the negotiations, Witkoff was accused by both American and Russian officials of having misrepresented Putin’s position to Trump.

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/11/21/a-friendly-reminder-trump-s-new-ukraine-peace-plan-is-the-work-of-two-diplomatic-amateurs-kirill-dmitriev-and-steve-witkoff