President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky attends a meeting of the Ukrainian Defense Liaison Group at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, September 6, 2024.
Heiko Becker | Reuters
Multiple media outlets reported on Tuesday that Ukrainian officials are open to moving forward with the framework for a U.S.-backed peace deal to end the war between Kiev and Russia, but key details remain unresolved.
Both ABC News and CBS News reports cited unnamed U.S. officials who said Ukraine had “agreed” to the deal, but noted that some points still needed to be resolved.
It is not clear whether the same U.S. official is quoted in both articles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Tuesday that Kiev was ready to move forward with the peace framework, Reuters reported, citing a copy of a speech he gave to a coalition of allies.
“I think we’re very close to a deal. We’ll see…I think we’re making progress,” President Donald Trump said at the White House on Tuesday.
“Slight disagreements remain,” Trump said in a Truth Social post late Tuesday afternoon.
He directed U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and said U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll would “meet with the Ukrainians.”
“I look forward to meeting with President Zelensky and President Putin in the near future, but only when an agreement to end this war is final or in the final stages,” Trump wrote.
The post comes after U.S. officials met with a Ukrainian delegation in Geneva over the weekend for talks that led to major revisions to the 28-point peace plan originally presented by Washington.
The plan was widely seen as highly advantageous to the invading force, Russia, but was “tweaked with additional input from both sides,” Trump acknowledged in a post Tuesday.
“Our delegations reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva,” Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s head of state security, told XPost.
However, it was reportedly quite uncertain whether Russia would agree to the revised peace plan, which was narrowed down to 19 points.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any agreement must reflect the understanding reached at the Alaska summit between Trump and Putin in August.
On Tuesday, officials from Kiev and Moscow reportedly met with Driscoll in the United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi.
Overnight, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that there was “nothing to say yet” and that the Kremlin was “monitoring media reports”, keeping the Kremlin mum on the ongoing discussions.
“We understand that negotiations between the United States and Ukraine are ongoing. We understand that some adjustments have been made to the published document. We understand that changes have already been made to the document that we previously received privately, but at some point there will probably come a time when we will also establish contact with the American side and formally receive some information,” Peskov said. “There is no new information at this time.”
The original 28-point plan, which did not involve Ukraine, included controversial provisions such as territorial concessions by Ukraine in exchange for handing over eastern Donbass, which is partially occupied by Russian forces.
The original agreement also called for Ukraine to reduce its military by 50%, among other proposals that would cross Ukraine’s “no-crossing line.”
President Trump has urged Ukraine to accept the deal by the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Nov. 27, prompting President Zelensky to declare on Friday that Ukraine faces a difficult choice: “Either you lose your dignity or you lose an important partner,” referring to the United States.
That deadline appears to have been scrapped. It is unclear how many points from the original agreement remain in the latest possible peace deal.
