US and Ukrainian negotiators have developed improved guidelines for a peace plan and plan to continue working to end the war in the coming days, the BBC writes.
A joint statement said the talks in Geneva had been very productive. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that significant progress had been made in refining the plan. The initial version of the plan satisfied Moscow, but was opposed by Kyiv and the European Union, who considered it too favorable to the Russians.
Rubio said that there was still a lot of work to be done, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky added that there were signs that Donald Trump’s team was listening to the Ukrainians.
According to Rubio, the main thing now is to reduce the number of open issues in the 28-point plan prepared by the US. However, any final version of the plan would have to be approved by both the Ukrainian and US presidents before being offered to Russia, and there are still issues that need to be discussed.
The positive reviews of the meeting appeared just hours after Trump accused Ukrainian leaders of ingratitude.
The US president also pointed out that Europe still buys oil from Russia. Moscow, in turn, uses revenues from energy trade to finance the war in Ukraine.
Several media outlets have reported that an alternative, European-drafted peace plan has been seen. The BBC has not had the opportunity to familiarize itself with the contents of the document, and Rubio denied knowing of its existence.
The plan discussed in Geneva includes conditions that require Ukraine to withdraw its troops from Donetsk, internationally recognize Russian rule in both Donetsk and Luhansk, and in Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. It is also planned to freeze Ukraine’s borders along the front line in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions, and the Ukrainians will have to reduce their army.
In exchange for abandoning the plan to join NATO, Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees, about which nothing is said in detail. The document says that it is expected that Russia will not attack its neighbors, while NATO will not continue to expand. Russia, according to the plan, will also be allowed to return to the international economy.
Trump previously gave Ukraine until the 27th of November to agree to the recommendations, but after Ukraine’s allies expressed concerns about the plan, he indicated that this was not the final version of the plan. Rubio told reporters that he was optimistic that an agreement on the plan would be reached in a reasonable time. Before the talks in Geneva, Rubio and the State Department insisted that the leaked plan was created by the United States. Meanwhile, a number of US senators previously alleged that Rubio told them that the plan was designed by Russia and did not reflect the positions of the Trump administration.
Rubio denied this, saying that the plan was designed by the US with the participation of Russia and Ukraine, and the State Department called the alleged conversation between the secretary of state and the senators a blatant lie.
Read also: Zelensky ready to work with US to end war in Ukraine
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