By hosting talks on Sunday between Ukrainian, US and European officials over a prospective peace plan for Ukraine \u2013 one partly sketched by the Russian Kirill Dmitriev \u2013 Switzerland treads a fine line between pushing for peace and defending the international legal order it so often champions.<\/p>\n
A stone-faced politician suddenly charges across the lobby of Geneva\u2019s Intercontinental Hotel. The man, surrounded by bodyguards and an equally taciturn entourage, is Marco Rubio, officially in town to discuss peace with Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Geneva is no stranger to hosting diplomatic talks. But these resemble something closer to a standoff \u2013 Ukraine and Europe pushing back against Washington. To end the war with Russia, the Trump administration is demanding that Kyiv surrender sovereignty over certain territories, halve its armed forces and drop its ambition of joining NATO.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a return to Europe\u2019s darkest hours, warns David Harland, director of Geneva\u2019s Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. \u201cThe US-Russian proposal is something Europe hasn\u2019t seen since Munich in 1938 and Molotov-Ribbentrop in 1939. Europe is paying the price for 30 years of neglecting its military power,\u201d he told Le Temps.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After their meeting, both Rubio and Andriy Yermak, head of Ukraine\u2019s presidential administration, told reporters the session had been \u201cproductive\u201d. Rubio went further, touting the talks as \u201cprobably the most productive\u201d to date, adding that point-by-point changes to Donald Trump\u2019s peace plan are now being negotiated.<\/p>\n
The Russian architect behind the \u2018American\u2019 plan<\/p>\n
The stakes could hardly be higher. Yet on Sunday evening, little leaked from the discreet meetings inside the Intercontinental or around the US and French missions. The opacity was all the more striking given that Trump had just hinted he was open to revising parts of the plan and that the 27 November deadline for Ukraine to accept it could shift. Talks kicked off late and were expected to run well into the night.<\/p>\n
This carefully managed tension contrasted sharply with the evident delight of one man hundreds of kilometres away in Moscow. Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), revelled in the \u201chysterical reactions\u201d the supposedly \u201cAmerican\u201d plan was causing across Europe. This was unsurprising as he appears to have helped design it. Multiple sources suggest as much.<\/p>\n
US lawmakers have been saying it openly. At the Halifax International Security Forum, Republican senator Mike Rounds and independent Angus King said Rubio had told them privately that the US peace plan was in fact a Russian one, which Washington had agreed to relay to Kyiv. King described it as a \u201cwish list of the Russians\u201d, \u201cnot the administration\u2019s plan\u201d. Rounds added that the English document \u201clooked more like it was written in Russian to begin with\u201d \u2013 a claim reinforced by linguists who spotted tell-tale signs of an AI-translation.<\/p>\n
Asked by Le Temps about the plan\u2019s origins, Russia\u2019s consul-general in Geneva initially claimed the plan came from Trump and Putin\u2019s Alaska summit. \u201cThey came up with this solution,\u201d he said. He then clarified that \u201cthe project presented today is our new version\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to Reuters, it was drafted in late October in Miami during a meeting between Trump\u2019s special envoy Steve Witkoff, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and Russian businessman Kirill Dmitriev \u2013 despite Dmitriev being under US sanctions. \u201cRussia\u2019s positions are finally being taken seriously,\u201d Dmitriev boasted on his return, overshadowing veteran foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, said to be \u201cout of favour\u201d since the indefinite postponement of the planned Trump-Putin summit in Budapest.<\/p>\n
A man with \u2018physical access to the boss\u2019<\/p>\n
Dmitriev\u2019s clout is not new, but it has grown since Trump\u2019s re-election. He is credited in Moscow with steering Russia\u2019s approach to negotiating with the White House strictly on the basis of commercial interests. He endlessly touts the benefits of rekindling US\u2013Russian business ties \u2013 hence the plan\u2019s unusually generous perks offered to Trump as a would-be peacemaker. In the same vein, Dmitriev has floated, in all seriousness, the idea of a rail tunnel under the Bering Strait linking Russia and the United States. \u201cHe\u2019s extremely ambitious, always chasing something that will make him famous,\u201d a close associate told<\/a> the exiled Russian outlet Meduza.<\/p>\n Born in Kyiv during the Soviet era, Dmitriev is a discreet operator who spent much of his career in American firms. He appears to be well-trusted within the Kremlin \u2013 helped by the fact that his wife, Natalia, went to school with Putin\u2019s daughter Katerina Tikhonova. He is reportedly close to one of Putin\u2019s sons-in-law, according to independent media, and holds a rare privilege within Russia\u2019s elite: he has, quite literally, \u201cphysical access to the boss\u201d.<\/p>\n Moving forward at any cost<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Putin continues to push on every front. On Thursday, he wore military fatigues for the fourth time since the invasion began to announce the fall of Kupiansk, a town in the Kharkiv region that has seen months of brutal fighting. Several Ukrainian battalions are said to be encircled. The Russian defence ministry also claims progress on another major axis in the Donbas, towards the strategic city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region. Ukraine disputes these claims, and even hardline pro-war Russian analysts have cast doubt on them.<\/p>\n But the message is clear: Russia intends to keep advancing. As Putin put it on Friday, \u201cIf Ukraine doesn\u2019t want to discuss Trump\u2019s proposals, then Kyiv and the European warmongers must understand that the events of Kupiansk will inevitably be repeated on other key sectors of the front. Maybe not as quickly as we\u2019d like, but inevitably. And overall, that suits us.\u201d<\/p>\n