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While President Trump attacked the Ukrainians, Secretary of State Marco Rubio flew to Geneva to seize control of negotiations that were going off the rails.
Nov. 24, 2025, 9:15 p.m. ET
Last week, President Trump set a hard deadline for Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to agree to the details of a 28-point draft peace deal with Russia. If he refused, Mr. Trump said, the Ukrainian leader would be left “to fight his little heart out.”
By Monday, that deadline, Thanksgiving Day, was gone. The 28-point plan, which was widely criticized as a series of one-sided concessions to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, had been shrunk to closer to 20 points.
Some of the most sensitive elements, including limits on the size of the Ukrainian military and a proposed ban on basing NATO troops inside Ukraine, were set aside for future negotiation. So was the question of where the new boundaries between Russia and Ukraine would be drawn.
But the price of the changes, made during a series of meetings over 11 hours in Geneva led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is clear. Mr. Putin, some Trump administration officials predict, is likely to dismiss the new draft out of hand, which would lead to a long and drawn-out negotiation — just what Mr. Trump was trying to short-circuit.
As Mr. Rubio said when he was leaving Geneva on Sunday, “Well, obviously the Russians get a vote here, right?”
They do, of course, and whether this latest effort amounts to anything may hinge on the Russian reaction.
