The 28-point plan and the negotiating track it opened

DiplomaticPoliticalTerritorial changeExternal support and diplomacy

A renewed diplomatic push began in mid-November 2025 around a 28-point plan worked up between the US special envoy Steve Witkoff and his Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev. As reported, it would have capped Ukraine's armed forces, required a constitutional commitment not to join NATO, barred NATO troops from Ukraine, recognised Russian sovereignty over Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, held Ukrainian elections within a hundred days, lifted sanctions and readmitted Russia to the G8 — and given Ukraine "reliable security guarantees" that the text did not define. Ukraine and its European allies read it as reproducing Russia's maximalist demands. Talks in Geneva on 23–24 November 2025 produced a revised plan, reported to rest on European counterproposals limiting Russian gains; its details have never been published. President Zelensky said at the end of December that ninety per cent of a deal was agreed. Three further rounds in the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland in late January and February 2026 produced no breakthrough, and talks scheduled in the UAE for early March were postponed because of US and Israeli military action against Iran.

Why it mattersThis is the file's answer to its own standing question about whether there is a negotiating architecture or only meetings — and the answer is: an architecture exists, and the thing it has not been able to hold is the only thing that matters. Formats, envoys, venues and rounds are all now established. So is a pattern in which the unresolved item is always the same: territory, and the security guarantee that is offered against it. The "ninety per cent agreed" figure is worth reading carefully, because the remaining tenth is not a residue — it is the war. Two further features deserve recording. The revised plan that Ukraine and Europe consider the live text has not been made public, so the most consequential document in the negotiation cannot be assessed by anyone outside it. And the track has already been suspended once for reasons entirely external to this war, which is a reminder that the mediator's attention is a variable in its own right.

Confidence: ModerateSources: House of Commons Library research briefings ↗ · Established international media reporting · Official government statementsMethodology Corrections

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