Editor's Note: This story has been updated to clarify a quote from Sen. Mike Rounds.
The U.S. State Department on Saturday pushed back on claims from U.S. lawmakers about the origin of a leaked peace plan for Ukraine after one Republican senator told reporters U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio “made it very clear … it is not our peace plan.”
The leaked 28-point peace deal “demands sweeping territorial and security concessions from Kyiv while offering Moscow major economic and political incentives,” the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Speaking on the proposed plan at a Halifax, Nova Scotia press conference Saturday, a gaggle of senators claimed Rubio had distanced the U.S. from the deal.
“Secretary Rubio did make phone call to us this afternoon,” Senate Armed Services Committee member Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said Saturday at a Halifax press conference. “I think he made it very clear to us that we are a the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives. It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”
“It is a proposal that was received and as an intermediary, we have made arrangements to share it,” Rounds continued. “And we did not release it, it was leaked. It was not released by our members.”
Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who also sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters the plan is not the “administration’s position — it is essentially the wish list of the Russians,” Newshour Foreign Affairs and Defense Correspondent Nick Schifrin reported Saturday.
According to Politico,“The lawmakers said the call came at their request after they grew alarmed by the proposal and heard global leaders railing against it. Rubio, they said, agreed to walk them through the situation and gave the lawmakers permission to describe what he told them.”
As Reuters reported Saturday, “many senior officials inside the State Department and on the National Security Council were not briefed” on the plan, citing “two people familiar with” the draft.
“One senior U.S. official said Secretary of State Marco Rubio was read in on the 28-point plan, but did not clarify when he was briefed,” Reuters added.
According to the report, “The situation has sparked worries inside the administration and on Capitol Hill that [U.S. special envoy Steve] Witkoff and [President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared] Kushner skirted the interagency process and that the discussions with [Russian businessman Kirill] Dmitriev have resulted in a plan that favors Russian interests."
As the senators' Halifax press conference made the rounds Saturday, senior administration officials began “refuting what 3 U.S. senators say Rubio told them,” Wall Street Journal reporter Robbie Gramer wrote on X.
“This is blatantly false,” State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Saturday. “As Secretary Rubio and the entire administration has consistently maintained, this plan was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians.”
Rubio himself appeared to contradict the senators, insisting on X the proposal “was authored by the U.S.”
“The peace proposal was authored by the U.S. It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations[.] It is based on input from the Russian side,” Rubio said. “But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.
As Bloomberg reporter Steven Dennis noted, Rubio’s statement was “oddly all in passive voice.”
“A truly bizarre series of events,” Punchbowl News Senior Congressional Reporter Andrew Desiderio wrote Saturday. “Senators from both parties said in Halifax that Rubio told them via phone today that the Ukraine peace plan is actually a Russian document, not a U.S. proposal. State Department [spokesperson] says that’s not true, it’s a U.S.-authored proposal.”
Desiderio noted that “after the State Department essentially [accused] Sens. Rounds and King of lying about their phone call with Rubio,” Rounds issued a vague statement that did not walk back his remarks in Halifax.
“I appreciate Secretary Rubio briefing us earlier today on their efforts to bring about peace by relying on input from both Russia and Ukraine to arrive at a final deal,” Rounds wrote late Saturday on X.
As Desiderio noted, while Rubio's statement insisted the plan was authored by the U.S., he didn't "address what he said or didn’t say to senators.”
“Also notable Rubio is framing it as ‘a strong framework for ongoing negotiations’ even though the [Trump administration] gave Ukraine [until] Thursday to accept it,” Desiderio wrote.
The Punchbowl News congressional reporter added that the Reuters report describing “worries” inside the Trump administration “is being passed around among senior Hill staffers in both parties who want to zero in on Witkoff’s role here.”
Reacting to the alarming back-and-forth Saturday, former defense department official Dan Shapiro exclaimed, “Holy hell. Can these people get their act together?"
“If Congress functioned, there would be hearings about this entire train wreck starting on Monday,” reporter Mike Rothschild wrote Saturday on X.
“What a complete mess,” journalist Aaron Parnas added.