Russia ‘certainly won’t agree to’ Trump’s 28-pointers Ukraine peace plan, says Moscow’s security expert

Russia's former director at the National Security Council said on Monday (Nov 24) that the peace plan proposed by US President Donald Trump in the Russia-Ukraine war has certain parts that Moscow "certainly would not agree to". He said that Russia has “every incentive” to drag out the negotiation process.

“There are elements of this the Russians certainly won’t agree to. There are elements the Ukrainians won’t agree to. But the Russians have every incentive to play this along,” Jeffrey Edmonds, former director for Russia at the National Security Council, told CNN. “There’s no incentive for them to actually agree to this, but there’s every incentive for them to drag it along,” he said.

"You have to change the Kremlin’s calculus on whether or not they can achieve their goals in Ukraine … That is the only thing that’s ultimately going to bring them to the table," he said when he was asked what could push Russia toward some form of peace agreement.

This came after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after a meeting with the Ukrainian delegation in Geneva on Sunday (Nov 23), said that it was a "productive" and "meaningful" meeting. Rubio said they will come back in around one or two hours, so he will not take questions now. "We've had probably the most productive and meaningful meeting so far in this entire process," he said.

"I think the takeaway from it is, I think this was a very, very meaningful, I would say probably best meeting and day we've had so far in this entire process going back to when we first came into office in January," he added. The Ukrainian delegation echoed the same statement. Rubio said the talks were an "ongoing process" and would resume "later tonight," adding that they might be able to answer questions then, and then "Let's get back to work."

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media that Russia started the war, is refusing to end it, and is trying to preserve its ability to continue fighting "and not only against Ukraine".

"The crux of the entire diplomatic situation is that it was Russia, and only Russia, that started this war, and it is Russia, and only Russia, that has been refusing to end it throughout the full-scale invasion. From the very first minutes of February 24, Putin has been waging this war with complete disregard for how many of his own people he loses and how many of ours he kills," Zelensky wrote on X.