Top European and Ukrainian envoys conferred in Geneva on Sunday ahead of talks with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio over President Donald Trump’s proposal to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
The head of the Ukrainian delegation, presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak, wrote on social media that they held their first meeting with the national security advisers from the U.K., France and Germany. The allies have rallied around Kyiv in a push to revise the plan, which is seen as favouring Moscow.
Rubio was expected to join the talks together with U.S. Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll and Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff.
“The next meeting is with the U.S. delegation. We are in a very constructive mood,” Yermak said. “We continue working together to achieve a lasting and just peace for Ukraine.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was waiting for the outcome of the talks. “A positive result is needed for all of us,” he said. “Ukrainian and American teams, teams of our European partners — are in close contact, and I very much hope there will be a result. Bloodshed must be stopped and it must be guaranteed that the war will not be reignited,” he wrote in a post on the Telegram messaging service on Sunday.
Ukraine and allies ruled out territorial concessions
The 28-point blueprint drawn up by the U.S. to end the nearly four-year war has sparked alarm in Kyiv and European capitals.
Zelenskyy has said his country could face a stark choice between standing up for its sovereign rights and preserving the American support it needs.
Writing on the social media platform Truth Social Sunday, Trump expressed his frustration that the conflict was still continuing, and said that he had inherited the war from the previous U.S. administration.
“A WAR THAT IS A LOSER FOR EVERYONE, ESPECIALLY THE MILLIONS OF PEOPLE THAT HAVE SO NEEDLESSLY DIED. UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS, AND EUROPE CONTINUES TO BUY OIL FROM RUSSIA,” he wrote.
The proposal, originating from negotiations between Washington and Moscow, acquiesces to many Russian demands that Zelenskyy has categorically rejected on dozens of occasions, including Ukraine giving up large pieces of territory.
The Ukrainian leader has vowed that his people “will always defend” their home.
Speaking before Sunday’s talks, Alice Rufo, France’s minister delegate at the Defence Ministry, told broadcaster France Info that key points of discussion would include the plan’s restrictions on the Ukrainian army, which she described as “a limitation on its sovereignty.”
“Ukraine must be able to defend itself,” she said. “Russia wants war and waged war many times in fact over the past years.”
Speaking to reporters outside the White House on Saturday, Trump said the U.S. proposal was not his “final offer.”
“I would like to get to peace. It should have happened a long time ago. The Ukraine war with Russia should have never happened,” he said. “One way or the other, we have to get it ended.”
Trump didn’t explain what he meant by the plan not being his final offer, and the White House didn’t respond to a request for clarification.
Rubio’s reported comments cause confusion
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday that Warsaw was ready to work on the plan with the leaders of Europe, Canada and Japan, but he also said that it “would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created.”
Some U.S. lawmakers said Saturday that Rubio had described the plan as a Russian “wish list” rather than a Washington-led proposal.
The bipartisan group of senators told a news conference that they had spoken to Rubio about the peace plan after he reached out to some of them while on his way to Geneva.
Independent Maine Sen. Angus King said Rubio told them the plan “was not the administration’s plan” but a “wish list of the Russians.”
A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”
Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The secretary of state doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favourable to Moscow.
WATCH | What’s in the proposal and why it’s come out now:
The U.S. is pressuring Ukraine to accept a 28-point peace deal with Russia, but what exactly is in the proposal and why has it come about now? CBC’s Briar Stewart explains.
Possibility for additional talks
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that he would hold a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday. He said he would talk to the Russian leader about reviving a previous deal from July 2022 that allowed Ukraine to safely ship exports of grain via the Black Sea.
The agreement stayed in place until the following year, when Putin refused to extend it, saying that a parallel agreement promising to remove obstacles to Russian exports of food and fertilizer hadn’t been honoured.
“We had a grain corridor endeavour to open the path to peace,” Erdogan said, “Unfortunately we were only partially able to succeed. Tomorrow I will be asking Putin to revisit the endeavour.”
Erdogan’s new diplomatic push comes just days after he met with Zelenskyy in Ankara,
