Linguistic features in a draft United States “peace proposal” for Ukraine have drawn attention to the role of Russian officials in shaping the text and to the manner in which it was prepared.
The 28-point document, promoted by the Trump administration as a framework to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, contains several formulations that appear to reflect direct translation from Russian rather than idiomatic English. The wording is prompting questions about how far Moscow’s own framing and legal concepts have been carried over into what is presented as a US initiative.
One passage highlighted by linguists and diplomats is the third point of the plan: “It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and Nato will not expand further.” The phrase “it is expected” is grammatically correct but unusually vague in English for a text that purports to establish security guarantees. By contrast, the equivalent Russian construction – ожидается (ozhidayetsya) – is common in official language and carries a familiar sense of impersonal expectation, often used in decrees or draft legislation.
Similar patterns appear elsewhere. Terms such as неоднозначности (usually rendered as “ambiguities”) and закрепить (“to enshrine” or “to codify”) are standard in Russian legal and diplomatic usage. Their appearance, apparently carried directly into English rather than being recast in more natural Anglo-American legal phrasing, suggests that at least some sections of the document were drafted in Russian first and then translated.
The White House has acknowledged that the proposal was written jointly by Kirill Dmitriev, a long-time associate of Vladimir Putin and chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, and Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special representative. The two men are reported to have worked through the text during a meeting in Miami, before it was circulated within the US administration.
Dmitriev has in recent weeks become a prominent public advocate of a negotiated settlement. In a series of interviews he has said that Russia, the United States and Ukraine are “quite close” to a diplomatic outcome and has stressed that, in his view, Moscow’s position is now “really being heard” in Washington.
According to reporting based on US and Russian officials, the Dmitriev–Witkoff text forms the core of a wider 28-point plan that would require Kyiv to accept significant concessions. These reportedly include recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, a freeze of the current front lines in other occupied regions, limits on the size of Ukraine’s armed forces, and a bar on future NATO membership, alongside a package of economic measures and the partial release of frozen Russian assets for reconstruction.
US officials have presented the initiative as a pragmatic attempt to stop the fighting and reset relations with Moscow, arguing that sanctions could be reimposed were Russia to launch a new offensive. Critics in Ukraine and Europe have focused instead on the extent to which the plan reflects longstanding Russian demands, and on the way it has been developed.
Kyiv was not involved in drafting the text. Nor were key European partners, despite the plan’s implications for NATO enlargement and European security architecture. The White House has confirmed that Ukraine and EU states were briefed only after the Miami talks, once Dmitriev and Witkoff had already agreed a consolidated text.
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