Trump uses Gaza playbook in push for peace in Ukraine

President Trump’s push to end Russia’s war with Ukraine takes a page from the playbook he used to obtain a cease-fire in Gaza. By force of personality and deadlines, he is trying to jam through a plan to stop a grinding conflict between two reluctant warring parties.

Believing they have a new window of opportunity to restart peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, Trump administration officials are rushing ahead with a new framework to end the Ukraine war modeled after the Gaza deal President Donald Trump pushed, despite little initial input from Ukrainian or European allies, according to sources.

The push to restart talks reemerged as a top priority for the President in recent weeks — shortly after the US helped broker a ceasefire in Gaza, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Trump has indicated he wants to expedite the timeline for ending the war in Ukraine, hoping to conclude a conflict he once said publicly would be the easily resolved, the sources added. Some US officials have said that the administration wants Russia and Ukraine to agree to a deal by the end of the year, according to two sources.

Like the proposal the Trump administration crafted which led to the ceasefire in Gaza, the Ukraine plan reads as a listicle of bullet points, laying out commitments each side would make in order to drive a lasting end to the conflict.

Both proposals call for the halt to fighting, global funding for reconstruction and a board overseeing the commitments led by Trump. The ongoing war, now approaching its fourth year, has fueled the frustrations of the President.

As a result, several top Trump administration officials have turned their focus back to the war in Ukraine and the US has considered enlisting some of the same foreign intermediaries who helped facilitate negotiations related to Gaza – including Qatar and Turkey – to play a more prominent, but still behind the scenes, diplomatic role, the sources said.

Some of the similarities to the Gaza ceasefire deal that appeared in the Ukraine framework for peace that emerged on Thursday, which US officials cautioned was not a final proposal, were very stark.

Similar to the ceasefire in Gaza, which is being overseen by a Trump-led “Board of Peace,” the draft proposal describes the Ukraine peace implementation as being “monitored and guaranteed by the Peace Council, headed by President Donald J. Trump,” according to a draft confirmed by a US official.

The 28-point plan includes elements such as territorial concessions in areas not currently held by Russia, a limit on the size of Ukraine’s armed forces and a Ukrainian commitment in its constitution that it will not join NATO, the draft said.

Reports emerged earlier this week that President Trump’s top envoy Steve Witkoff was working with Russia on the framework, which includes the Russian maximalist demands.

Witkoff has been working with Russian Special Envoy and the head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund Kirill Dmitriev directly for many months and the two have remained engaged in crafting this new draft proposal, sources said.

Europeans who said they had not been briefed on the details grew concerned about what the effort could mean for Ukraine – given their longstanding position that Ukraine must be involved in any discussions about a peace deal.

On Wednesday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio tweeted that ending the war would require “an extensive exchange of serious and realistic ideas.” Rubio added that the Trump administration would continue “to develop a list of potential ideas” to end the Ukraine war, without saying any final proposal was being floated.

Some Europeans let out a collective sigh of relief. “Yesterday nerves were up, today nerves are down,” said a diplomat based in Brussels on Thursday, explaining that Rubio’s tweet had appeared to chill the idea that a firm new deal was on the table that the US would be urging Ukraine to accept.

A senior State Department official said that Rubio “was reiterating a point he has made for months – a diplomatic end to the war requires both sides to make concessions, and that cannot happen without ongoing dialogue.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Thursday that both Witkoff and Rubio “have been working on a plan quietly for about the last month.” She would not go into details of the plan, saying that it’s “ongoing” and “in flux.”

The plan was presented on Thursday to the Ukrainians by the Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, two sources said. While his trip to Ukraine was previously scheduled, it was an opportunity to share the current thinking on the revived push to end the war, the sources explained.

The Ukrainian presidential office did not outright reject the current US efforts, saying Thursday on X that “the President of Ukraine has officially received from the American side a draft plan which, in the American side’s assessment, could help reinvigorate diplomacy.”

This could be the start of the end to the Russia-Ukraine war, but there are still hurdles to come.