On November 19, reports surfaced that Russia and the United States were quietly drafting a new plan to end the war in Ukraine. Later that day, several of the plan’s details became public, indicating that the proposal largely repeats demands Vladimir Putin has made of Kyiv since the start of the conflict. The new plan’s parameters were developed primarily by two special presidential envoys: Steve Witkoff from the White House and Kirill Dmitriev from the Kremlin. Meduza reviews who these men are and how they fit into negotiations to end Europe’s bloodiest war in decades.

Kirill Dmitriev

Dmitriev was born 50 years ago in Kyiv and now stresses that he hails “not from Ukraine but from the USSR.” At age 17, after hearing from acquaintances about how to apply for free education abroad, he ended up in the United States. Dmitriev received an elite education, studying at Stanford and Harvard, and began his career at the international consulting company McKinsey. In the 2000s, he worked in Russia and Ukraine. In Kyiv, he ran an investment fund controlled by Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of Ukraine’s second president, Leonid Kuchma. In 2011, he became head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a state investment fund that backs “leading and promising Russian companies” in partnership with “the world’s top investors.”

During the coronavirus pandemic, RDIF became known as the investor behind Sputnik V — one of the first COVID-19 vaccines. Dmitriev’s reputation grew alongside the product as he aggressively promoted it around the world. “He’s wildly ambitious, always looking for something that will make him famous,” one acquaintance told Meduza. Others described his demanding, authoritarian management style and his talent for cultivating “the right friends.” (Dmitriev’s wife is thought to be a friend of Putin’s younger daughter, and Dmitriev himself is said to be a friend of Putin’s son-in-law.)

After Trump was re-elected, Putin appointed Dmitriev his representative for economic cooperation and included him in the Russian delegation for talks with the Americans in Saudi Arabia — the first since the invasion of Ukraine. Dmitriev has been credited with proposing negotiations with Trump centered on business interests. He quickly began talking about the benefits of restoring Russian–American cooperation. The most striking example of this approach, so far, is his idea for a tunnel under the Bering Strait connecting Russia and the United States.

In October, bilateral ties soured and peace talks stalled. After Trump canceled a meeting with Putin in Budapest over “different expectations” and imposed sanctions on Russia’s oil sector, Dmitriev flew to the U.S. to mend fences. Analyst Alexander Baunov has suggested that Dmitriev had been cast as the “good cop” after Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a tense conversation with his U.S. counterpart, Marco Rubio, which reportedly derailed the Trump–Putin meeting in Budapest.

After these setbacks, Dmitriev met with Witkoff and declared that “Russia and the U.S. and Ukraine are actually quite close to a diplomatic solution” to the conflict. At the time, the remark seemed odd: Putin and Trump had just shifted from pleasantries to arguing over whose weapons of mass destruction are more powerful. Now it appears that Dmitriev was hinting at the peace plan he and Witkoff had devised. The prevailing assumption, bolstered by an apparently accidental tweet from Witkoff, is that Dmitriev leaked the plan’s details to reporters.

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Steve Witkoff

A 68-year-old New York developer and loyal friend of Donald Trump, Witkoff began his career as a real estate lawyer and later founded the Witkoff Group, a development firm with projects in New York, California, and Florida. Witkoff and Trump met in the 1980s through work, and a few years later they ran into each other by chance in a Manhattan store. Trump didn’t have any money on him, so Witkoff bought him a sandwich, beginning a friendship that’s lasted decades.

In Trump’s first administration, Witkoff played a far less visible role than he does now. But after Trump lost the 2020 election and briefly fell into disgrace, Witkoff didn’t abandon him. “When a lot of fake friends ran for the hills after the 2020 election, Steve always stayed loyal to my father and our entire family, and that is something we will never forget,” Donald Trump Jr. told CNN in April 2025. When Trump returned to the White House, he initially planned to make Witkoff his Middle East negotiator. But Trump was reportedly so pleased with how Witkoff pushed through the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas — prepared by the outgoing Biden administration in January 2025 — that he tasked him with conducting talks with Russia as well (and later with Iran). Since March, Witkoff has flown to meet Vladimir Putin at least four times.

Ukrainian officials have accused Witkoff of siding with Russia, and Western diplomats describe him as unprofessional. Reports indicate that his team lacks Russia experts, and that during talks with Putin, he dispensed with a stenographer and relied on Kremlin translators. After the Trump–Putin meeting in Alaska, which produced no breakthrough in the negotiations, Witkoff was accused by both American and Russian officials of having misrepresented Putin’s position to Trump.

Even so, Trump shows no sign of having lost confidence in his special envoy, who, notably, works for the White House without pay. (Witkoff is a billionaire and flies for official business in his own private jet.) In October, Trump publicly praised Witkoff for helping broker the deal between Israel and Hamas that brought home the remaining hostages. “He’s just a great guy; everybody loves him,” Trump said.