Donald Trump has announced that ‘something good is happening’ amid the Ukraine peace talks and has hinted that ‘big progress is being made’.
In a post on Truth Social, the U.S. President wrote: ‘Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine???
‘Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!’
Ukraine and the U.S. are moving closer towards signing Donald Trump’s peace plan after removing some of the Kremlin’s demands that Kyiv has insisted are non-negotiable ‘red lines’.
Kyiv‘s non-starters for peace negotiations are the formal recognition of occupied territories, limits on defence forces, and restrictions on Ukraine’s future alliances, the speaker of the country’s parliament said on Monday.
Those positions have been long stated by Ukraine, but run counter to the proposals in the controversial 28-point peace draft that was leaked last week, sparking uproar among European leaders.
Speaking at the Crimea Platform summit in Sweden, speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk also said membership of the EU and NATO must be elements of Ukraine’s security guarantees and any peace plan.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday hailed ‘important steps’ after a Geneva summit with the U.S., but said more was needed to end a nearly four-year war following the Russian invasion.
‘In the steps we have coordinated with the side of the U.S., we’ve managed to keep extremely sensitive points,’ Zelensky told a virtual conference in Sweden, but added that ‘to achieve real peace, more is needed’.
U.S. and Ukrainian negotiators drew up an ‘updated and refined peace framework’ in Switzerland, with a joint statement saying the meeting had been ‘highly productive’.
Positive accounts of the meeting followed Trump’s furious accusation that Ukraine’s leaders were showing ‘zero gratitude’ for his efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday hailed ‘important steps’ after a Geneva summit with the U.S.
Donald Trump on Saturday accused Ukrainian leaders of showing ‘zero gratitude’ to the U.S. for its efforts in trying to secure peace
The U.S. Secretary of State confirmed: ‘We’ve had probably the most productive and meaningful meeting so far in this entire process’
European officials welcomed Monday what they said were steps in the right direction at talks in Geneva on U.S. peace proposals seen as heavily favoring Russia, but they offered few details and warned the discussions still have a long way to go.
‘The negotiations were a step forward, but there are still major issues which remain to be resolved,’ Finnish President Alexander Stubb wrote on social platform X about Sunday’s meeting in Switzerland.
After it was leaked last week, Trump‘s peace deal was cautiously welcomed by Moscow, but not by leaders in Kyiv and Europe, who saw it as handing over unprecedented political power to the Kremlin over Ukraine.
It capitulated to Vladimir Putin’s long-standing maximalist demands for control over territory, leaving Ukraine defenseless in the face of future aggression.
Some of its most alarming details were proposals for Ukraine to cut its army from 900,000 to 600,000 personnel, give up the entirety of the eastern Donbas region (15 per cent of which it still controls), and enshrine in its constitution that it will never join NATO.
Meanwhile, the West would lift sanctions on Russia and Moscow would be invited back into the G8.
‘They want to stop the war and want Ukraine to pay the price,’ one Ukrainian source told Reuters, while a senior lawmaker from Zelensky‘s party said the country was ‘f****** mind-blown’.
In a speech on Friday, the Ukrainian President said Ukraine ‘might face a very difficult choice: either losing dignity, or risk losing a key partner’, adding that ‘today is one of the most difficult moments in our history’.
Adding to the Ukrainian fury were reports that the draft deal was originally written in Russian and later translated to English.
Contributing to the speculations, Mike Rounds, a Republican senator from South Dakota, wrote on X: ‘This administration was not responsible for this release in its current form. They want to utilise it as a starting point.’
He added: ‘It looked more like it was written in Russian to begin with.’ The White House has denied the accusations.
On Saturday, leaders from Europe, Canada and Japan signed a joint statement at the G20 summit in South Africa, saying that the peace deal had elements ‘essential for a just and lasting peace’, but would ‘require additional work’, citing concerns over territory and limits on Ukraine’s army.
Sir Keir, alongside Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron, the German and French leaders, criticised elements of the draft, warning that it would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attacks from Moscow.
Speaking at the G20 summit, Sir Keir said he was ‘concerned’ about the notion of a military cap, arguing that it was ‘fundamental that Ukraine has to be able to defend itself if there’s a ceasefire’.
‘Obviously, I think it should be done as soon as possible, but it’s got to be a just and lasting peace, and so we’ve got to get it right,’ he said.
But after originally putting pressure on Kyiv to accept the deal by November 27, the soured relations between the U.S. and Ukraine improved on Sunday, following fruitful negotiations in Geneva.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said there had been a ‘tremendous amount of progress’ on delivering the peace deal, but there was ‘still some work to be done’ before any final draft could be sent to Putin.
‘We’ve had probably the most productive and meaningful meeting so far in this entire process,’ he said.
The administration is set to go through ‘some of the suggestions that were proffered to us’ and making some ‘changes’ and adjustments to get closer to something both Ukraine and the U.S. are satisfied with, he said.
‘I think the takeaway from it is, I think this was a very, very meaningful, I would say probably best meeting and day we’ve had so far in this entire process going back to when we first came into office in January,’ he said.
The EU also submitted a modified version of the U.S.’s peace plan for Ukraine that pushed back on proposed limits to Kyiv’s armed forces and territorial concessions.
The document, drafted by the so-called European E3 powers – Britain, France and Germany – proposes that Ukraine’s military be capped at 800,000 ‘in peacetime’ rather than a blanket cap of 600,000.
It also says ‘negotiations on territorial swaps will start from the Line of Contact’, rather than pre-determining that certain areas should be recognised as ‘de facto Russian’, as the U.S. plan suggests.
Rubio denied any knowledge of the counter-proposal’s existence.
U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff (second from the left), and U.S. Secretary of state Marco Rubio (right) at the beginning of talks with the Ukrainian delegation in Geneva
EU chief Antonio Costa said Monday he spoke with Zelensky ahead of an emergency meeting of European Union leaders to discuss the updated plan for Ukraine.
‘Spoke with President Zelensky ahead of this morning’s informal EU leaders’ meeting on Ukraine peace efforts, to get his assessment of the situation,’ Costa, president of the European Council, said on X.
‘A united and coordinated EU position is key in ensuring a good outcome of peace negotiations – for Ukraine and for Europe,’ he said ahead of the meeting to be held on the sidelines of a summit in Angola.
The Kremlin said Monday it was not informed on results of talks between U.S., Ukrainian and European officials in Geneva at the weekend.
‘We did not receive any information,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, while adding it was aware ‘adjustments’ were made to a US plan to end the conflict with Kyiv that Moscow had welcomed.
Despite peace negotiations, Russia has shown no sign of stopping its relentless attacks on Ukraine after almost four years of war.
Putin’s forces staged a ‘massive’ drone attack on Sunday on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing four people and injuring several others, officials said.
‘There is a massive attack on Kharkiv,’ Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Terekhov said four people had been killed, including one person whose body was recovered from under rubble. Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said 12 people were injured, including two children aged 11 and 12.
Fifteen strikes were recorded in six areas of the city in northeastern Ukraine.