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Last week, the American news website Axios suddenly ran a story saying that there was a new peace plan for Ukraine, that the US had signed up to it, and here were the leaked details.

It was supposed to be the brainchild of a Trump envoy called Steve Whitkoff and a Russian businessman

called Kirill Dimitriev. One look at the plan told the world that it appeared highly

favourable to Russia. What followed seemed chaotic. Within hours, its status had been downgraded,

its origins questioned, and a counterplan drawn up. So what is, or was, the Witkoff-Dimitri

of Pact? What's happened to it? What does it tell us about the Americans, the Europeans,

the protagonists themselves, and the prospects

for peace? Step into the briefing room and together we'll find out.

First, let's look at where this peace plan came from. I'm joined by Angela Stent, who's a senior

fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,

an independent think tank in Washington, and she's a former American National Intelligence Officer

for Russia and Eurasia. Andrew Sten, can you take us through the events of the past week

in terms of how this peace plan emerged? Well, it's quite dizzying a week ago, Axios, which is a popular media outlet here,

published a leaked version of this peace plan, and then immediately there was a flurry of activity.

Then the next day, Friday, Dan Driscoll, who is the Secretary of the Army, was sent to Kiev to

brief both the Ukrainians and the European ambassadors in Kiev about what this plan held.

He apparently had to be schooled before he went on the history of the conflict because he was

not familiar with it.

Then, of course, there were,

the Ukrainians were very concerned about this draft, the Europeans were very concerned about

this draft. And so on Sunday, in Geneva, there was a meeting both between American

...