US Presidential Envoy Steve Witkoff, riding the momentum from the successful Gaza ceasefire agreement, placed a telephone call last month to a high-ranking Kremlin official in which he proposed that the United States and Russia collaborate on a parallel peace initiative for Ukraine—and urged that Vladimir Putin personally bring the matter to President Donald Trump.
The call, which took place on October 14 and lasted slightly more than five minutes, saw Witkoff offering Yuri Ushakov—President Putin’s senior foreign-policy adviser—specific advice on the most effective way for the Russian leader to approach Trump on the subject.
Among Witkoff’s recommendations were arranging a direct Trump-Putin telephone conversation before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s scheduled visit to the White House later that same week and framing the outreach around the recently concluded Gaza deal as a successful model.
“We put a 20-point Trump plan together that was 20 points for peace, and I’m thinking maybe we do the same thing with you,” Witkoff told Ushakov, according to an audio recording of the conversation that was reviewed and transcribed by international media. A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, confirmed receipt of a request for comment but did not provide an immediate response. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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The recorded exchange marks the first publicly available evidence of Witkoff’s direct diplomatic engagement with Russian officials in recent weeks and appears to reveal the origin of the 28-point Ukraine peace proposal that surfaced earlier this month—a document the United States has since pressed Kyiv to accept as the foundation for negotiations.
Putin himself stated this month that he regards the American plan as a potential basis for a settlement. During a meeting of Russia’s Security Council, he informed senior officials that while the 28-point proposal had not yet been examined in detail with Washington, Moscow had indeed received a copy.
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The Witkoff-Ushakov conversation occurred at a moment when Trump was still celebrating his personal role in ending the Gaza war. Just one day earlier, he had become the first US president since 2008 to address Israel’s Knesset in person, having secured the release of the last 20 living hostages held by Hamas.
At the same time, Trump’s tone toward Putin appeared to be hardening. As he prepared for his October 17 Oval Office meeting with Zelenskiy, the president was actively weighing the supply of longer-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, considering new sanctions against Russia, and expressing open irritation with the Russian leader.
“I don’t know why he continues with this war,” Trump remarked on October 14—the very day Witkoff reached out to Ushakov. “He just doesn’t want to end that war. And I think it’s making him look very bad.”
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