Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assessed the ongoing talks between representatives of his country and Ukraine United States of America in Geneva as positive. “There are signals that President Trump’s team is listening to us,” Zelensky said in his evening video address on Sunday. Negotiations in Switzerland regarding a peace plan will continue. “The team will work late into the night and there will be more reports,” Zelensky said.
American Representative and Ukraine According to information from the Reuters news agency, they discussed the possibility of Zelensky’s visit to Washington this week. Therefore, the visit should serve to discuss the most sensitive points of the peace plan with US President Donald Trump. However, the date has not been determined.
According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there has been “tremendous progress” in the negotiations in Geneva. Rubio expressed confidence that a revised version of the US peace plan would emerge. A basic document has been drawn up and controversial points have been narrowed down, the US Secretary of State said after discussions with Ukrainian representatives. Therefore, he was “cautiously optimistic” that an agreement could be reached “soon”.
Merz hopes for “new dynamics”
According to Rubio, open questions include the future role of the EU and NATO and security guarantees. However, there are no unresolved questions that cannot be addressed, the US Secretary of State said. The results must now be conveyed to the Russian side. Ideally, we would like to reach a conclusion by Thursday.
Rubio had previously announced changes to the US peace plan to end the war in Ukraine. According to the Chairman of Ukraine’s Security Council, Rustem Umerov, the revised version of the plan now takes into account some of Ukraine’s “most important priorities.”
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on ZDF that he hoped “a new dynamic will emerge in these negotiations and that by the end of this week there will be at least one small step towards a ceasefire and negotiations can then be held.” He added: “We are now formulating a negotiating position. And I hope that this will not only be coordinated on the European side with Ukraine and America, but most importantly, it will persuade the Russian side to come to the negotiating table now.”
Germany, France and Britain had previously submitted a joint counter proposal to the peace plan put forward by America. Therefore, the Ukrainian army should be limited to 800,000 troops in peacetime and not 600,000 troops, as planned by America. In addition, negotiations regarding the exchange of territories on the current line of military contact will begin. This rejects US demands to recognize certain territories as “de facto Russian” territory.
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