THE US-BACKED 28-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, which became public last week, drew from a Russian-authored paper submitted to the Trump administration in October, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The Russians shared the paper, which outlined Moscow’s conditions for ending the war, with senior US officials in mid-October, following a meeting between US President Donald J. Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, the sources said.

The paper, a non-official communication known in diplomatic parlance as a “non-paper,” contained language that the Russian government had previously put forward at the negotiating table, including concessions that Ukraine had rejected such as ceding a significant chunk of its territory in the east.

This is the first confirmation that the document — whose existence was initially reported by Reuters in October — was a key input in the 28-point peace plan.

The US State Department and the Russian and Ukrainian embassies in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

The White House did not comment directly on the non-paper but cited Mr. Trump’s comments that he was optimistic about the 28-point plan’s progress.

“In the hopes of finalizing this Peace Plan, I have directed my Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with President Putin in Moscow and, at the same time, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll will be meeting with the Ukrainians,” Mr. Trump wrote.

It is unclear why and how the Trump administration had come to rely on the Russian document to help shape its own peace plan. Some senior US officials who reviewed it, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, believed the demands made by Moscow would likely be rejected outright by the Ukrainians, the sources said.

SKEPTICISM OVER RUSSIAN INFLUENCE
After the paper’s submission, Mr. Rubio held a call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during which the paper was discussed, the sources said.

Speaking to reporters in Geneva this week, Mr. Rubio acknowledged receiving “numerous written non-papers and things of this nature,” without elaborating.

Since the peace plan was first reported by Axios last week, skepticism has mounted among US officials and lawmakers, many of whom see the plan as a list of Russian positions and not a serious proposal.

The United States has put pressure on Ukraine, nonetheless, warning it could curb its military assistance if Ukraine did not sign.

The plan was composed at least in part during a meeting between Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Mr. Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds, in Miami last month. Few inside the State Department and White House were briefed on that encounter, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that Mr. Witkoff had offered advice to high-ranking Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov regarding how Mr. Putin should speak to Mr. Trump. According to call transcripts obtained by the news agency, Mr. Ushakov and Mr. Witkoff alluded to a possible “20-point plan” as early as Oct. 14. The scope of that plan apparently widened during subsequent conversations with Mr. Dmitriev, it added.

PLAN REVISED AFTER GLOBAL BACKLASH
The US proposal, which caught officials in Washington and Europe off-guard, triggered a flurry of diplomacy across three continents. The original plan has changed dramatically since then: Nine of the original 28 points have been cut following talks between senior US and Ukrainian officials, according to ABC News.

A bipartisan group of US senators said on Saturday that Mr. Rubio had told them the 28-point plan was not a US plan but instead a Russian wish list, although the White House and State Department vigorously denied that Mr. Rubio had characterized it as such.

In the discussions that followed, a senior US delegation that included Mr. Rubio agreed to excise or modify some of the most pro-Russian parts of the plan during meetings in Geneva with European and Ukrainian officials.

Mr. Driscoll is currently meeting with a Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi. A Ukrainian delegation is also in the United Arab Emirates for talks with the US team, according to a US official.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian officials said they supported the modified peace deal framework that had emerged from the latest talks but stressed that the most sensitive issues – territorial concessions are especially contentious – needed to be fixed at a potential meeting between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump. — Reuters

TAIPEI — Taiwan will introduce a $40-billion supplementary defense budget to underscore its determination to defend itself in the face of a rising threat from China, President Lai Ching-te said on Wednesday.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, has ramped up military and political pressure over the past five years to assert its claims, which Taipei strongly rejects.

As Taiwan faces calls from Washington to spend more on its own defense, mirroring US pressure on Europe, Mr. Lai said in August he hoped for a boost in defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030.

Unveiling the T$1.25-trillion ($39.89-billion) package, Mr. Lai said history had proven that trying to compromise in the face of aggression brought nothing but “enslavement.”

“There is no room for compromise on national security,” he said at a press conference in the presidential office.

“National sovereignty and the core values of freedom and democracy are the very foundation of our nation.”

DETERMINATION TO DEFEND ITSELF
Mr. Lai, who first announced the new spending plan in an op-ed comment in the Washington Post on Tuesday, said Taiwan was showing its determination to defend itself.

“It is a struggle between defending democratic Taiwan and refusing to submit to becoming ‘China’s Taiwan,’” he added, rather than merely an ideological struggle or a dispute over “unification versus independence.”

Mr. Lai had previously flagged extra defense spending but had not given details.

The de facto US ambassador in Taipei, Raymond Greene, wrote on Facebook that the United States supports Taiwan’s “rapid acquisition of critical asymmetric capabilities.”

“Today’s announcement is a major step towards maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait by strengthening deterrence,” he added.

Taiwan has been modernizing its armed forces to push an “asymmetric” approach to warfare to make its forces, which are much smaller than China’s, agile and able to pack a greater and more targeted punch. 

For 2026, the government plans that such spending will reach T$949.5 billion ($30.3 billion), to stand at 3.32% of GDP, crossing a 3% threshold for the first time since 2009, government figures showed.

Speaking earlier in Beijing, a spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office said Taiwan was allowing “external forces” to dictate its decisions.

“They squander funds that could be used to improve people’s livelihoods and develop the economy on purchasing weapons and currying favor with external powers,” the spokesperson, Peng Qingen, told reporters.

“This will only plunge Taiwan into disaster.”

The United States is bound by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, despite a lack of formal diplomatic ties.

US RELATIONS
But since US President Donald J. Trump took office in January, it approved only one new arms sale to Taiwan, a $330-million package for fighter jets and other aircraft parts announced this month.

“The international community is safer today because of the Trump administration’s pursuit of peace through strength,” Mr. Lai wrote in the Washington Post.

Mr. Lai said Taiwan’s ties with the United States were “rock-solid,” when asked at the news conference whether he was worried about Mr. Trump’s visit to China next year, given the improved Washington-Beijing trade relations.

“Recently, before his trip to Asia, President Trump specifically emphasized that ‘Taiwan is Taiwan’ and President Trump (said he) personally respects Taiwan. These two brief statements say it all,” Mr. Lai said, referring to comments Mr. Trump made while visiting the region last month.

Mr. Lai says only Taiwan’s people can decide their future. Beijing has rejected his repeated offers of talks, saying he is a “separatist.” ($1=31.3400 Taiwan dollars). — Reuters

THE US MEDICARE health plan said on Tuesday that newly negotiated prices for 15 of its costliest drugs will save 36% on those medications compared with recent annual spending, or about $8.5 billion in net covered prescription costs.

The prices go into effect in 2027, including a monthly price of $274 for Novo Nordisk’s popular GLP-1 drug semaglutide, sold as Wegovy for weight loss and Ozempic for diabetes.

Medicare’s recent net price for Ozempic was $428 a month, according to an analysis published in the Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy. Medicare put the drug’s list price, before confidential rebates and discounts, at $959 a month.

Based on such non-discounted list prices, Medicare said savings on the 15 drugs ranged from 38% to 85%.

“They were gonna go to the table and try and push on those prices, and that’s what they did,” said William Padula, professor of pharmaceutical and health economics at the University of Southern California.

AstraZeneca’s leukemia drug Calquence, Boehringer’s lung treatment Ofev and Pfizer’s breast cancer drug Ibrance took the biggest hits from this round of Medicare negotiations, each slashed by over $4,000 from estimated net prices.

The annual price negotiations were established under President Joseph R. Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022. Previously, Medicare was barred by law from negotiating with drugmakers.

SAVINGS OUTPACE PREVIOUS YEAR’S
The projected 2027 savings of 36% is better than the 22% savings of net spending — according to an estimate from Goldman Sachs — that Medicare achieved with last year’s first round of price negotiations for 10 different drugs.

“They are getting more efficient with their methodology,” but this latest batch of newer products likely had “more wiggle room” on price, Mr. Padula said.

Additional drugs up for negotiation this year included GSK’s asthma and COPD inhaler Trelegy Ellipta, which will have a price of $175 versus its list price of $654. AbbVie’s irritable bowel syndrome medicine Linzess has a new price of $136, down from $539.

Analysts said they will also be comparing the new prices to prices negotiated by other high-income countries, a concept President Donald J. Trump has fought for, which is sometimes referred to as most-favored-nation pricing, or MFN.

The pharmaceutical industry has fought the efforts. “Whether it is the IRA or MFN, government price setting for medicines is the wrong policy for America,” said Alex Schriver, spokesperson for industry body PhRMA.

Medicare covers more than 67 million people aged 65 and over and those with disabilities.

“These prices are going to come down below the existing net prices. There will be some real savings,” said Sean Sullivan, professor of pharmacy at the University of Washington.

“All of the other players can see them. What is going to stop them from asking manufacturers for that same price?” He said.

PRICES STILL HIGHER THAN IN OTHER WEALTHY NATIONS
The Medicare agency unveiled last year maximum new prices for the first 10 high-cost medicines negotiated under the IRA to take effect in 2026.

For those drugs, including medicines such as the Pfizer and Bristol Myers Squibb blood thinner Eliquis and Amgen’s arthritis drug Enbrel, the new prices were still on average more than double, and in some cases five times, what drugmakers had agreed to in four other high-income countries.

Under the IRA, Medicare is required to consider a number of factors for pricing, including manufacturer data and availability of alternative treatments. The law does not include a review of international prices in the process.

Many other countries have long had universal prescription drug coverage that relies on centralized price negotiations with manufacturers.

The Trump administration has since outlined what it considers most-favored-nation pricing terms: the lowest price in any country that is part of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development with a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of at least 60% of US GDP per capita.

Under a separate pilot program, Medicare has proposed a smaller “country basket,” which includes six G-7 countries — the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — plus Denmark and Switzerland. The benchmark used to calculate the MFN price would be the second-lowest price within that basket of countries, adjusted by GDP per capita.

Medicare’s next round of drug price talks is expected to include 15 additional prescriptions and hospital-administered medicines and begin in February. — Reuters