When the Trump administration’s 28-point peace plan for the Ukraine war leaked last month, its evident pro-Russian bent was treated with a mixture of disdain and confusion in Kyiv and across Europe. Special envoy Steve Witkoff, who helped craft the plan, had long been seen as sympathetic to the Kremlin, but the latest proposals went far beyond anything he or the White House had previously floated.

Initially, observers linked much of the plan’s pro-Russian slant to Witkoff’s apparent gullibility in his interactions with Russian envoys. Why else would the Trump administration be putting forward terms that punish the victim more than the aggressor?

As reporting in the weeks since has revealed, there’s a far simpler and more concerning explanation: money. 

In a bombshell story in The Wall Street Journal, reporters detailed how the U.S. peace plan had little to do with American interests and much less to do with things like democracy or even national security. 

Instead, it was all about constructing financial deals between insiders in both Russia and the U.S., and how to enrich the elites of both countries at everyone else’s expense, especially Ukraine’s.

Much of the reporting built on previous investigations by The Moscow Times, which outlined many of the same potential deals, revealing how the Kremlin was pushing for a “

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