re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict.

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Confirmed by Ukraine’s General Staff: strikes hit the Afipsky oil refinery and the Beriev aircraft repair plant in Taganrog, Russia. The Taganrog facility upgrades Tu-95 bombers and A-50 AWACS aircraft, both key to Russia’s war effort. The Afipsky refinery again targeted for fueling Russian forces.

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Girkin says, in a letter from his prison, that a correspondent has sent him the leaked list of the plan's 28 points (which he says have not been published in the Russian media). He is aware that subsequent US-Ukraine talks have reduced them to 19 points, but observes sourly: "I suspect that the "thrown out" [points] were precisely those that were (or should have been) at least minimally beneficial to the Russian Federation (if we can even talk about any "benefit" for Russia from this shameful document, in which Kirill Dmitriev allegedly participated). While the "19 points" haven't been received yet, I'll try to briefly analyse the 28 that were sent.

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Girkin's comments provide an insight into the fine line that Putin is having to walk between reaching a settlement that he can accept and one that the hardliners will accept. Putin likely agrees with many of their objections, but knows that they are unachievable.

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IGOR STRELKOV: ANALYSIS OF TRUMP'S "28 POINTS" Dear Frol Sergeyevich! (in response to the letter dated November 23, 2025) Thank you for your always informative summary! However (despite having studied it with great care), I am in no hurry to respond to it, but to Trump's so-called "28 points," the contents of which were forwarded to me today.

I am aware that their number (after consultations with Ukrainians and European partners) has already been reduced to 19. But I suspect that the "thrown out" were precisely those that were (or should have been) at least minimally beneficial to Russia (if we can even speak of any "benefit" for Russia from this shameful document, which Kirill Dmitriev allegedly participated in drafting). While the "19 points" haven't been received yet, I'll try to briefly analyze the 28 that were sent.

1. They signify Russia's recognition of a limitation of its own sovereignty, with a transfer of part of this sovereignty to the "supreme arbiter" ("protector") represented by the United States (Trump). In other words, the United States will control the "settlement process" between both the so-called "Ukraine" and the Russian Federation and "PUNISH violators" (which Moscow agrees to in advance by signing this agreement).

2. They signify Russia's de facto renunciation of part of its sovereign territory (the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, accepted/incorporated into the Russian Federation according to the Constitution within the borders of the corresponding oblasts of the former Ukraine). There is no legally justifiable way to return them.

3. According to these conditions, our troops WILL NOT be able to occupy territories allegedly abandoned by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which (in reality) means unilaterally ceding strategically important footholds in the Sumy, Kharkiv, and Dnipro regions, since no one is restricting the Ukrainian Armed Forces from returning to them (including in Vovchansk and Kupyansk).

4. They are giving the so-called "Ukraine" (and this is perhaps the most important thing for the Kyiv regime) a BREATH, which they apparently especially need now. After which they (with the tacit or even rabid support of the EU and the rest of the "civilized world"), having gained strength and properly prepared (a 600,000-strong army makes this "easily" possible) will resume military operations against Russia. But this time, with Europe (and possibly the US) "ready to support" them.

5. They will lead to a sharp decline in the combat readiness of our own Active Army, which has been achieved with such effort up to this point. In other words, during the (short) "truce," the Ukrainian Armed Forces are almost guaranteed to be significantly strengthened, while our Armed Forces will be significantly weakened in their (currently) most important "trump card" – the size, organization, and training of our assault infantry.

6. The signing/acceptance of this ultimatum (that's exactly what it sounds like) by Moscow will mark the beginning of a "strategic break" with Beijing. This could have the most catastrophic consequences, the simplest and most realistic of which is a remarkable situation where China "cuts off" all aid and support to us, and the US doesn't lift ("hasn't had time," etc.) its own sanctions.

Then Washington will be able to literally "twist Russia in the foot," reducing it to the same status of its "semi-powerless vassal" as the so-called "Ukraine" currently is. (And, by the way, they'll "casually snatch away" all the apparent "gains" in favor of the Ukrainians—and Russia/Moscow won't be able to do anything about it! Overall, I believe that no "agreement" based on these "28 points" (or "19" created on their basis) will be concluded, and the war will continue. But, theoretically, [with heavy sarcasm] "there is no limit to our statesmanship..."

That's all for now. Sincerely, I.V. Girkin 11/25/2025

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By Drew Hinshaw , Benoit Faucon , Rebecca Ballhaus , Thomas Grove and Joe Parkinson | Design By Annie Ng Nov. 28, 2025 9:00 pm ET

Three powerful businessmen—two Americans and a Russian—hunched over a laptop in Miami Beach last month, ostensibly to draw up a plan to end Russia’s long and deadly war with Ukraine.

But the full scope of their project went much further, according to people familiar with the talks. They were privately charting a path to bring Russia’s $2 trillion economy in from the cold—with American businesses first in line to beat European competitors to the dividends.

At his waterfront estate, billionaire developer-turned-special envoy Steve Witkoff was hosting Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and Vladimir Putin’s handpicked negotiator, who had largely shaped the document they were revising on the screen. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had arrived from his nearby home on an island known as the “Billionaire Bunker.”

Dmitriev was pushing a plan for U.S. companies to tap the roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank assets, frozen in Europe, for U.S.-Russian investment projects and a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine. U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic.

There were no limits to what two longtime adversaries could achieve, Dmitriev had argued for months: Their rival space industries, which raced one another during the Cold War, could even pursue a joint mission to Mars with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump’s inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity, according to Western security officials. By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals, Moscow could reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.

Dmitriev, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, had found receptive partners in Witkoff—Trump’s longtime golfing partner—and Kushner, whose investment fund, Affinity Partners, drew billion-dollar investments from the Arab monarchies whose conflict with Israel he had helped mediate.

The two businessmen shared President Trump’s long-held approach to geopolitics. If generations of diplomats viewed the post-Soviet challenges of Eastern Europe as a Gordian knot to be painstakingly unraveled, the president envisioned an easy fix: The borders matter less than the business. In the 1980s, he had offered to personally negotiate a swift end to the Cold War while building what he told Soviet diplomats would be a Trump Tower across the street from the Kremlin, with their Communist regime as a business partner.

“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Witkoff told The Wall Street Journal, describing at length his hopes that Russia, Ukraine and America would all become business partners. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”

When a version of the 28-point plan leaked earlier this month, it drew immediate protests. Leaders in Europe and Ukraine complained it reflected mostly Russian talking points and bulldozed through nearly all of Kyiv’s red lines. They weren’t assuaged even after administration officials assured them that the plan wasn’t set in stone, worried that Russia—after violently redrawing European borders—was being rewarded with commercial opportunities.

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As Western leaders convened this week to digest the plan, Poland’s prime minister Donald Tusk offered a pithy summary: “We know this is not about peace. It’s about business.”

For many in the Trump White House, that blurring of business and geopolitics is a feature, not a bug. Key presidential advisers see an opportunity for American investors to snap up lucrative deals in a new postwar Russia and become the commercial guarantors of peace. In conversations with Witkoff and Kushner, Russia has been clear it would prefer U.S. businesses to step in, not rivals from European states whose leaders have “talked a lot of trash” about the peace effforts, one of these people said: “It’s Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’ to say, ‘Look, I’m settling this thing and there’s huge economic benefits for doing that for America, right?’”

A question for history will be whether Putin entertained this approach in the interest of ending the war, or as a ploy to pacify the U.S. while prolonging a conflict he believes is his place in history to slowly, ineluctably win.

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One sign that he may be serious is that some of his most-trusted friends, sanctioned billionaires from his St. Petersburg hometown—Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers, Boris and Arkady—have sent representatives to quietly meet American companies to explore rare-earth mining and energy deals, according to people familiar with the meetings and European security officials. That includes reviving the giant Nord Stream pipeline, sabotaged by Ukrainian tactical divers, and under European Union sanctions.

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Dmitriev arrived at the White House on April 2 and presented a list of multibillion-dollar business projects the two governments could pursue together. At one point, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Dmitriev that Putin needed to demonstrate he was serious about peace.

But Dmitriev felt his businesslike rapport was breaking through. “We can transition investment trust into a political role,” he said in an unpublished interview that month.

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In April, Dmitriev welcomed Witkoff to the St. Petersburg presidential library for another three-hour meeting with Putin. Witkoff took his own notes, relying on a Kremlin translator, then briefed the White House from the U.S. Embassy. That same month, European national security advisers planned to meet Witkoff in London to integrate him into their peace process. But he was busy with his other portfolio—negotiating a cease-fire in Gaza—and couldn’t make it. Afterward, one European official asked Witkoff to start speaking with allies over the secure fixed line Europe’s heads of state use to conduct sensitive diplomatic conversations. Witkoff demurred, as he traveled too much to use the cumbersome system.

Dmitriev and Witkoff meanwhile were chatting regularly by phone about increasingly ambitious proposals. The U.S. and Russia were discussing major agreements on oil-and-gas exploration and Arctic transportation, Dmitriev told the Journal. “We believe that the U.S. and Russia can cooperate basically on everything in the Arctic,” he said. “If a solution is found in Ukraine, U.S. economic cooperation can be a foundation for our relationship going forward.”

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Into position - American and Russian business leaders were quietly anticipating that Witkoff and Dmitriev would deliver, positioning their companies to profit from peace.

In secret talks, Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Neil Chapman met Rosneft boss Igor Sechin, Putin’s former private secretary, in the Qatari capital Doha, to discuss Exxon’s return to the massive Sakhalin project, an investment stranded after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Exxon, billionaire investor Todd Boehly and others have explored buying assets owned by Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer. The U.S. sanctioned Lukoil in October to increase pressure on Moscow, prompting the company to put its overseas assets up for sale. Elliott Investment Management eyed buying a stake in a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas into Europe.

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More recently, Kremlin-linked businessmen Timchenko, Kovalchuk and the Rotenbergs have been offering U.S. counterparts gas concessions in the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as potentially four other locations, according to a European security official and a person familiar with the talks. Russia has also mentioned rare-earth mining opportunities near the massive nickel mines of Norilsk and in as many as six other Siberian locations that are still unexploited, these people said.

Beach, Trump Jr.’s college friend, was in talks to acquire 9.9% of an Arctic LNG project with Novatek, Russia’s second-largest natural gas producer—which is partly owned by Timchenko—if the U.S. and U.K. remove sanctions on it, according to drafts of contracts reviewed by the Journal.

In a statement, Beach said that partnering with Novatek would “strongly benefit any company committed to advancing American energy leadership,” and that his company, America First Global, “actively seeks investment opportunities that strengthen American interests around the world.” He said he “has never worked with Steve Witkoff” but is “extremely grateful” for the efforts Witkoff and others are making to end the war in Ukraine. Trump Jr. has told people he isn’t doing business with Beach.

Meanwhile, Lynch, the Miami-based investor, had been asking the U.S. government to allow him to bid on the sabotaged Nord Stream Pipeline 2 if it came up for auction in a Swiss bankruptcy proceeding. Lynch, who in 2022 was given a license by Treasury to complete the acquisition of the Swiss subsidiary of Russia’s Sberbank, had been seeking a license for the pipeline since the Biden administration, but in April dialed up his lobbying efforts by hiring Ches McDowell, a friend of Trump Jr. He would pay McDowell’s firm $600,000 over the next six months. Lynch’s representatives reached out to Witkoff for a meeting.

In late July, Dmitry Bakanov, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, visited NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston—the first such visit since 2018—as well as the spacecraft manufacturing facilities of Boeing and SpaceX.

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The road to Miami - The chess pieces were moving into position. But all of it hung, to some degree, on whether Witkoff could unlock the conflict his boss had pledged during his campaign to resolve in a single day.

On Aug. 6, Witkoff flew to Moscow, at Putin’s invitation, for a meeting prepared only a few days in advance. Dmitriev walked him through Zaryadye Park overlooking the Moskva River, then escorted him to the Kremlin for another three-hour session with Russia’s leader. Putin mentioned wanting to meet with Trump personally. He gave Witkoff a medal, the Order of Lenin, to pass to a CIA deputy director whose mentally unwell son was killed fighting for Russia in Ukraine.

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The next day, Witkoff dialed into a videoconference with officials and heads of state from top European allies, and explained the outlines of what he understood to be Putin’s offer. If Ukraine would surrender the remaining roughly 20% of Donetsk province that Russia had failed to conquer, Moscow would forfeit its claim to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces. The European officials were confused. Did Putin mean he would withdraw his troops from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, as Witkoff was suggesting? Or, more likely, was Putin merely promising to not conquer the thousands of square miles of those two provinces that, after years of bloody fighting, remained in Ukrainian hands? Either way, Ukraine was skeptical about the value of a promise from Putin.

On Aug. 9, Witkoff retreated to the Spanish island of Ibiza. European leaders were still seeking clarity from him, the White House, and the State Department, on what exactly Putin had offered.

Witkoff wanted to strike while the iron was hot and hold a summit without delay. Dmitriev was optimistic Witkoff had taken Russia’s sensitivities on board: “We believe Steve Witkoff and the Trump team are doing a great job to understand the Russian position to end the conflict,” he told the Journal, a few days before.

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The Aug. 15 summit fell apart almost as soon as it began. Witkoff, Rubio, and Trump arrived on Air Force One, meeting Putin, his longtime adviser Yuri Ushakov, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Putin launched into a 1,000-year history lecture on the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian people. The two sides canceled a lunch and an afternoon session where they were meant to check through their other issues, like the exchange of prisoners. Witkoff left uncertain where things stood, but hopeful talks would accelerate soon. “Everyone was working hard, but it was positive,” he said.

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Make Money and End the War: Trump’s Actual Plan for Peace in Ukraine Looks Like This.

“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” states Steve Witkoff.

Witkoff, who has not visited Ukraine this year, plans to travel to Russia next week for the sixth time and meet with Putin again.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk provided a brief summary: “We know this is not about peace. This is about business.”

Sanctioned Russian billionaires—Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk, and brothers Boris and Arkady Rotenberg—have dispatched representatives to engage in confidential meetings with American companies. Earlier this year, ExxonMobil representatives met with executives from Russia’s largest state-owned energy firm, Rosneft, to discuss re-entry into the major Sakhalin gas project.

Jentry Beach, a college friend of Donald Trump Jr. and a donor to his father’s campaign, has been conducting negotiations to acquire a stake in Russia’s Arctic gas project.

Steven P. Lynch, who paid $600,000 this year to a lobbyist affiliated with Trump Jr., is seeking a Treasury Department license to purchase the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from a Russian state-owned company.

Exxon, billionaire investor Todd Boehly, and others have explored opportunities to acquire assets from Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer.

Recently, Kremlin-linked businessmen Timchenko, Kovalchuk, and the Rotenbergs have offered lucrative concessions to U.S. counterparts on gas in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Putin presented Witkoff with a medal, the Order of Lenin, intended for the CIA Deputy Director, whose son fought on Russia’s side and reportedly died in Ukraine.

Additionally, figures such as Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are noted as the primary individuals facilitating business discussions between U.S. and Russian interests.

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