By Shane CroucherShareNewsweek is a Trust Project memberThe leader of Ukraine's liberal Holos party, Kira Rudik, said that while the progress made between the U.S. and Ukraine in Geneva on President Donald Trump's draft peace plan is "pretty reassuring," there are still two key questions that must be answered.
Rudik, a member of the Rada, Ukraine's parliament, told Newsweek that Trump must answer both how he can get Russian President Vladimir Putin to finally sign onto a peace deal and how the U.S. will ensure that any resulting security guarantees for Ukraine actually work.
It comes after the U.S. and Ukraine hailed substantial progress in talks over the weekend in Geneva on Trump's draft peace plan, which they said in a joint statement had been "updated" and "refined" from an initial version criticized by European allies and Kyiv as weighted much too heavily in Russia's favor.
The current process is the closest a peace deal has been to fruition since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Trump has sought for months to broker an end to the war with little success, largely through diplomatic engagement with Russia and pressure on Ukraine through threats to withdraw vital U.S. support.
Ukraine Has 'Done Everything by the Book'
Rudik, whose pro-European party holds 19 of the 450 seats in the Rada, said Putin has so far not even agreed to the "bare minimum" of a ceasefire.
"Here, Ukraine has done everything by the book. We have agreed to all the proposals from the United States, including an unconditional ceasefire, rare earth minerals deal, and, of course, a meeting of President Zelensky with Putin in Istanbul," Rudik told Newsweek.
"But there was no step forward from Russia. And even right now, when these peaceful negotiations are happening, Russia continues killing us every day and night. So the question of even if this deal is perfect, how would President Trump pressure Russia into agreeing to it, is still absolutely open."
...She called the offer of U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in the draft 28-point deal a "breakthrough".
"The details of those, and how they will be agreed and executed, is critical," Rudik said. "Here in Ukraine, we are already burned by the Budapest Memorandum, where Ukraine gave up on our nuclear arsenal. However, instead of guarantees, we received assurances that didn't work when Russia attacked us in 2014."
Ukrainians "need to know how this time is different and that these potential security guarantees will be really executable," she added. "So, for that, they need not to be the promise of one leader, but actually ratified in the Congress so that it will be a promise of the nation."
Russia Awaits New Draft as Trump Hails Progress
Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, said at a press briefing on Monday that the Kremlin had not yet officially received the updated version of the peace plan from the Geneva talks. Russia had previously welcomed the initial version of the plan, and Putin called it the "basis" for an agreement.
Trump teased "big progress" in a post on Truth Social on Monday, having criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the weekend for not showing enough gratitude to the U.S. for its support.
"Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine???" Trump said in the post. "Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!"
There are no publicly known direct Russia-Ukraine peace talks. But the U.S. has held talks with each side as it developed the current peace plan in the works.
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