President Trump kickstarted the latest peace talks in Ukraine last week after Vice President Vance, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, made the case that a new 28-point plan could bring a breakthrough, administration officials tell Axios.
Why it matters: Their White House meeting on Nov. 18 — unreported until now — laid the groundwork for the talks in Geneva last weekend that have given the administration more hope than ever of stopping the war.
In the talks, U.S. and Ukrainian officials narrowed a list of 28 conditions in the proposed peace plan to 20 items, and reached substantive agreement on 18. A senior administration official said the other two points haven't been discussed publicly "because they're delicate issues."
- Those two issues are likely Ukrainian territorial concessions to the invading Russians and security guarantees for Ukraine to deter more Russian aggression.
Zoom in: During the White House strategy meeting, Trump recommended that U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, a friend of Vance's, take the proposal to Ukraine because he already was planning to visit Kyiv to assess its fighting capabilities and spirit, another source said.
- "It was Dan Driscoll's role, basically, to take an honest assessment of where their military situation stood by interacting directly with their military," the official said. "One of the hardest things to judge is the will to fight."
Zoom out: Aside from the big decision to launch the plan, the Oval Office meeting resembled other Ukraine strategy sessions being held almost daily by phone — and at least weekly in person — by Trump's inner circle.
- Vance, Rubio, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and special envoy Steve Witkoff are in the circle, joined recently by businessman Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law.
- Witkoff and Kushner drafted the initial 28-point plan after employing a similar list for the Gaza peace talks, as Axios first reported.
Inside the room: After Vance saw the document and consulted with Rubio, the two convened the White House meeting to get Trump's sign-off.
- "This wasn't just a paper — it was a paper that would now trigger a process," another source with knowledge of the matter said.
- With Gaza, "the only way we got progress [was to] ... memorialize it on paper. The only way we're going to get a deal here is if we begin to put down on paper what a starting point for a potential deal could look like."
- The meeting was sandwiched in between events at the White House with Saudi Arabia's leader, Mohammed bin Salman.
Reality check: Russia started the war in Ukraine, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown little interest in negotiating in good faith.
- Putin has slowly made gains in Ukraine, has wrecked the country's power grid in advance of the bitter winter, and has shown no sign of stopping the invasion — even as he loses as many as 7,000 soldiers a week, according to U.S. officials.
Friction point: Ukrainian politicians, European officials and American critics of Trump panned the peace proposal, saying it gives Russia concessions it hasn't earned.
- When Rubio flew to Geneva over the weekend to hammer out more details of the plan with Ukraine, it helped trigger an explosion of online chatter and news articles that claimed there was a divide between Vance and Rubio on Ukraine.
- Rubio took to X Tuesday night to dispute one story about a "rift" with Vance, writing: "These people don't just get things wrong, they literally make things up."
- One of the officials said: "There's this false narrative that there are two competing teams — this Marco Rubio pro-Ukraine team, and then there's JD Vance anti-Ukraine team. It's just not true. ... You can't survive here in this administration if you take that approach. There's only one team here."
Between the lines: Administration officials and advisers close to Vance and Rubio say the two have worked as a tag team throughout the process, a vestige of their time as friends and allies when they served together in the Senate. Their top staffers are friends and the two share an adviser, Andrew Baker.
- Rubio hasn't expressed interest in running for president against Vance in 2028 and repeatedly has referred to the vice president as the GOP's de facto presidential nominee for the next election.
- Unlike Vance, Rubio doesn't have a circle of political advisers or committees laying the groundwork for a presidential bid.
What's next: Trump has yet to get Putin to agree to sit down with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but advisers say he's undeterred.
- "Everyone's focused on getting a peace deal and stopping the killing," a White House adviser said. "That started with this peace plan."
