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U.S. and Ukrainian officials have reportedly reached agreement on 18 of the 20 items in a proposed peace plan aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, local media reported on Thursday.
The two unresolved points—widely believed to involve Ukrainian territorial concessions and the nature of U.S. security guarantees—remain under negotiation due to their sensitive nature, according to an Axios report.
The renewed peace initiative began with a November 18 White House meeting where Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio presented a 28-point proposal, which was approved by President Donald Trump. The Geneva talks that followed reduced the initial plan to 20 items and led to substantive agreement on the majority of them.
The two outstanding issues—described by a senior U.S. official as too "delicate" to discuss publicly—are believed to involve demands for Ukraine to recognize Russian control over currently occupied territories and questions over what form future U.S. security commitments would take. Kyiv has previously indicated such decisions would require direct talks between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to the report, Trump recommended that U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a personal associate of Vice President Vance, travel to Kyiv as part of the process. Driscoll’s role was to assess the Ukrainian military’s capacity and morale by interacting directly with defense forces. "One of the hardest things to judge is the will to fight," a U.S. official said.
The initial 28-point proposal was reportedly drafted by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff, who had previously worked on similar documents for peace efforts in Gaza. The Ukraine plan is based on a strategy of formalizing discussion points to advance negotiations, the report suggested.
The report notes that despite these efforts, Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown no indication of halting military operations. According to U.S. officials, Russia continues to make territorial gains while inflicting heavy damage on Ukraine’s infrastructure, especially its energy grid, ahead of the winter. U.S. estimates suggest Russian forces may be losing up to 7,000 soldiers per week.
While Trump has not yet secured a direct meeting between Putin and Zelensky, his advisers insist the effort is ongoing. "Everyone’s focused on getting a peace deal and stopping the killing," one White House adviser said, adding that this process began with the introduction of the current peace plan.
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