After the shock and confusion over the leak of a 28-point peace plan containing some of Russia’s most extremist demands and the marathon weekend negotiations to revise it, the United States and Ukraine struck a similarly cautious but hopeful tone Tuesday.
White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt wrote about X: “While sensitive, there are some details that cannot be resolved.”
Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s chief negotiator, said: “Our delegation has reached a common understanding of the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva.”
In other words, there is still a lot of work to be done, and it will probably involve the most important parts of the deal. But getting the U.S. and Ukraine to agree is not the most difficult part of the issue. Getting Russia to sign any kind of compromise seems nearly impossible at this stage, even though it has signaled its outright rejection of any amended deal over the past few days. Still, Russia wants the United States to keep trying.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that he believes a 28-point peace plan, which includes a promise for Ukraine to withdraw from territory it still controls and never join NATO, “could form the basis of a final peace settlement.” His comments came a day after the United States and Ukraine made a number of important amendments to the document during talks in Geneva.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov fleshed out that position, saying the 28-point plan was “based on the understanding reached in Anchorage” when the U.S. and Russian presidents met in August. He added that Russia had not yet received the revised text, but added: “If the spirit and letter of Anchorage were lost in the important understandings that we have documented, then of course the situation would be radically different.”
And Russia is not just silent about including Ukraine’s demands in the peace plan. He also indicated that he wanted Europe to be excluded from the negotiation process.
On Monday, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Europe’s counter-offer to the 28-point peace plan was “totally unconstructive.” Foreign Minister Lavrov went further on Tuesday in a historic rant, claiming that Europe’s attempts to mediate the Minsk agreements in 2014 disqualified it from playing a role in the Minsk agreements now.
“You guys had a chance, you just failed because you definitely didn’t seize it,” he said. The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said Russian officials have accused Europe of undermining the peace process and “perhaps trying to deflect from Russia’s own rejection of the deal.” Using this moment to highlight divisions within the NATO alliance may be another convenient side effect.
Time is not an infinite commodity on either side of this war, but Russia likely has more on its plate than Ukraine. On Monday night, Russia launched its seventh widespread attack on energy facilities in Ukraine in the past two months, the United Nations human rights watchdog said. The European Commission estimated last week that Ukraine would need more than 135 billion euros ($156 billion) over the next two years to survive if the war ends next year, according to Reuters. And Russia is increasing pressure on the front lines, and Ukraine’s human resources crisis is becoming more and more serious.
Still, Russian air defenses also operated throughout the night on Tuesday and shot down some 250 Ukrainian drones, the Russian Defense Ministry said, making it one of the largest attacks of the war so far.
Novorossiysk, a key oil export center and currently home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, has been targeted for the second time this month as part of an acceleration of long-range drone strikes against military and energy facilities in what Ukraine’s sanctions commissioner described as “armed sanctions.”
Russia’s oil and gas revenues in the first 10 months of this year fell by more than 20% compared to last year. And U.S. sanctions against Russia’s largest oil company also officially took effect on Friday, the first new measures of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term.
Olysia Rutsevich, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at Chatham House, argued that this may partly explain why Russia is trying to delay this new diplomatic push by the United States, while misleading Trump into believing it is still involved.
“Putin has been playing Trump for a while,” she wrote. “His goal is to disrupt enforcement of the oil sanctions that took effect on November 21, 2025, and to delay the adoption of secondary sanctions legislation currently being considered in the U.S. House of Representatives.”
Foreign Minister Lavrov appeared on Tuesday to be close to giving his nod to the strategy, although he acknowledged that it carries risks. “We are not rushing our American colleagues,” he said. “We waited a very long time from Anchorage just to talk to them and remind them that we are committed to defending those understandings…We still don’t know how long we can withstand attempts to lead them astray.”
