Donald Trump says “something good just may be happening” on talks to end the war in Ukraine – after his peace plan was “updated” after Ukraine-US talks in Geneva. Sir Keir Starmer will host a coalition of the willing call tomorrow – with two priorities in mind. Follow the latest.
Monday 24 November 2025 17:24, UK
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The UK’s foreign secretary has celebrated progress on peace talks in the Ukraine war.
Yvette Cooper urged Russia to now come to the table.
“We welcome the progress that is being made in Geneva,” she said.
“This morning I co-chaired a meeting with European foreign ministers and with the Ukrainian foreign minister, and we reaffirmed our support for a just and lasting peace for Ukraine, that upholds Ukraine’s sovereignty and also protects Europe’s security.
“That is why this work is so important and why the intensive work is still ongoing.”
She added: “Of course, there is a lot more work still to do but the key thing is that Russia now needs to come to the table, to stop the bombardment of Ukraine as we saw again last night.
“We need that just and lasting peace for the people of Ukraine.”<\/p>\n
A heating and power plant in Russia’s Moscow region is back online after it shut down because of a fire caused by a Ukrainian drone strike, the region’s governor has said.
The attack on the facility in Shatura on Sunday caused a major blaze and cut heating for around 33,000 residents as temperatures overnight hovered around freezing.
It was one of Kyiv’s most significant strikes to date on a power station deep within Russia.
Regional governor Andrei Vorobyov said authorities were still reconnecting apartment blocks and social facilities to the heating system.
Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine’s electricity and heat infrastructure during the fourth year of the war, while Kyiv has until recently mostly focused on trying to knock out Russia’s oil refineries, crude oil terminals and pipelines.
The 28-point peace plan announced by the US last week “no longer exists”, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian president’s office has said.
In a post on Facebook, Oleksandr Bevz, who was part of the negotiating team in Geneva, said Kyiv had “very constructive talks with the United States”.
He said US secretary of state Marco Rubio claimed it was “the most productive” meeting between Ukraine and Donald Trump’s administration.
Ukraine went through every point of the proposed plan with the US, and that the plan, “in the form everyone previously saw, no longer exists”, he said.
“Some points were removed, others revised – none of Ukraine’s concerns were left unaddressed,” he added.
Bevz said the “final decisions on the most sensitive issues” will be made by Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Trump.
The US and Ukraine are working on bridging the gaps in a peace plan to end the war with Russia, after agreeing to work on a US proposal Kyiv and its allies believe panders to Moscow.
The US peace proposal<\/b>
The initial 28-point proposal, presented by the US last week, called on Ukraine to cede more territory, accept limits on its military and abandon its hopes of joining NATO – all Russian demands Kyiv has consistently rejected.
The counter-proposal<\/b>
Kyiv and its European allies said they were not involved in crafting the original plan, and have drawn up a counter-proposal.
The new proposal would halt fighting at the present front lines, leaving discussions of territory open for later. It would also include a NATO-style US security guarantee for Ukraine.
Other key lines included a European agreement to cap Ukraine’s army at a peacetime figure of 800,000, and letting Moscow back into the G8.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said the European counterproposal seems completely unconstructive and does not work for Russia (see 14.40 post).
Donald Trump held a phone call with China’s President Xi Jinping, where they discussed bringing the Ukraine war to an end, the White House said.
Xi urged “all parties” in the conflict to “reduce differences”, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
He reiterated that China supports all efforts conducive to peace.
China has remained a consistent ally of Russia throughout its invasion of Ukraine, and is the top buyer of Russian oil, along with India.
A Russian Black Sea port has started exporting oil products again, two weeks after Ukrainian drone attacks brought exports there to a halt.
According to two industry sources and ship tracking data, a Gambia-flagged tanker named Sandhya left the port of Tuapse on 17 November with around 30,000 metric tons of gasoil and headed towards the Suez Canal, Reuters reports.
Another tanker, the Malawi-flagged Satna, loaded around 30,000 tons of gasoil on 18 November.
The fuel on the two vessels had been refined in Tuapse before it halted oil processing and had been stored in tanks, traders told the agency.
The local oil refinery resumed processing crude oil on 21 November, Reuters reported.
Donald Trump has expressed an openness to a jointly developed peace plan for Ukraine, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said.
Speaking on the sidelines of the EU-African Union summit in Angola, Merz said: “I reported on my telephone conversation with President Trump last Friday.
“As you know – I reported it – he expressed openness to a jointly developed peace plan.”
He added: “The representatives of Ukraine, the United States of America, and the member states of the European Union succeeded in achieving this yesterday in Geneva, and we are taking this message with us.
“We welcome the fact that these talks took place in Geneva, and we also welcome the interim result. Several issues were clarified.
“But we also know that peace in Ukraine will not happen overnight.”
‘I do not expect a breakthrough this week’<\/b>
Ukraine, the US and the EU agreed on a “common position” regarding Russia at the talks in Geneva, Merz said.
But the peace talks are “a laborious process”, Merz added, and only “small steps forward” will be made this week.
“I do not expect a breakthrough this week,” he said.
The “decisive move” in the talks now has to come from Russia, Merz added.
It comes after Trump said on social media this morning that “something good just may be happening” in the Ukraine peace talks.
Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov has just been talking about the European counterproposal to the 28-point peace plan by the US for Ukraine.
At first glance, the European update seems completely unconstructive and does not work for Russia, Ushakov said.
“Many” of the provisions in the initial US plan sent to Kyiv last week seem acceptable, while some of the other provisions require detailed discussion, he added.
There are “some signals” but no definitive agreement yet on arranging talks between Russian and US representatives in person, Ushakov said.
As we’ve been reporting, European leaders raised concerns about the 28-point plan, in particular about Ukraine making territorial concessions and having the size of its armed forces reduced, before drafting their own counterproposal.
After talks in Geneva yesterday, the US and Ukraine said they had drafted an “updated and refined peace framework”.
Ukrainian MP Lesia Vasylenko has been speaking to Sky News in the past hour.
She said that the 28-point peace plan drawn up by the US for Ukraine was not acceptable to the European region and wider international community as it was about “punishing the victim”.
Asked by presenter Jayne Secker <\/a>if it was worth Ukraine considering ceding some territory simply to end the war, Vasylenko said: “It’s not about ceding territory in return for peace, because we will not have peace if we simply give away Ukrainian territories to the aggressor. We will have more wars.
“It’s a time bomb waiting to happen. Anything that is not a just peace, a fair peace, will be a time bomb leading to more wars.”
She added: “The peace that will be achieved through making Ukraine cede territories will only be a short-term moment that will only lead to more losses for all of us.”
Watch Vasylenko’s interview here…<\/b>
By Mark Stone<\/a>, US correspondent<\/b>
Domestic US politics and Washington rivalries provide important context to this Ukraine showdown and a remarkable week of diplomacy.
Here are how a few key US figures are shaping the process.
JD Vance, vice president – who’s ‘deeply involved’<\/b>
The American decision to inject sudden impetus into the quest for peace, with the drawing-up of the secret (then leaked) 28-point plan, appears to have Vance’s fingerprints on it. Sources tell me he is deeply involved.
The territorial elements of the peace plan are almost identical to a proposal put forward by Vance in the summer of 2024 before Donald Trump won the election.
Vance’s stance on Ukraine has always leaned towards questioning the point of it all. He led the attacks on Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Oval Office in February, during that infamous showdown.
Vance is almost certain to run for the presidency in 2028. He knows that the MAGA base (which he’ll need in 2028) cares less about Ukraine and much more about domestic challenges. He wants Ukraine finished and fixed quickly.
He has recently issued less than subtle hints to Trump to spend more time on “the home front”.
He is also locked in a (surely-soon-to-be public) rivalry for the 2028 race with Marco Rubio.
That’s vitally important context, and Rubio is the next key character in all this.
Marco Rubio, secretary of state – Vance’s rival<\/b>
The rivalry between Rubio and Vance is obvious. It was always to be a relationship clash.
Vance is the America First Appalachian boy done good. Rubio is the more traditional interventionist neoconservative.
Trump publicly encourages this rivalry. “JD or Marco\u2026?” he frequently says.
Rubio is much more aligned to the “defend Ukraine” cause, and America’s role in that, than Vance ever has been.
While the thrust of this peace plan has Vance hallmarks on it, it’s Rubio who’s spent the weekend in Geneva ironing it all out with the Ukrainians and Europeans.
Rubio is also at the heart of a row about who actually authored the plan.
Senators say he told them it was a Russian plan – but he then posted on social media to insist it’s an American plan.
Dan Driscoll, Army secretary – Vance’s friend<\/b>
Dan Driscoll has emerged as a key figure in all of this – and one to watch.
As Army secretary, he is one of the top civilians within the Pentagon.
He leads the US Department of the Army, which is one of the three military departments within the Department of War (formerly the Department of Defence, before a Trump rebrand).
In the hierarchy, he sits just under Pete Hegseth, the secretary of war, but the speculation in Washington is that there is tension between the two of them.
Hegseth can’t fire or purge Driscoll, though, because he is a close friend of the vice president.
He and JD Vance were at Yale together and Trump likes him.
Unusually for a Trump official, he also enjoys bipartisan popularity.
It was Driscoll who was sent to present the 28-point plan to Zelenskyy in Kyiv three days ago.
Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy – Gaza peace plan’s architect<\/b>
Witkoff was the architect behind the Gaza peace plan.
And while he has gained significant respect among countries in the Middle East for that, there is an underlying unease about his abilities when it comes to Ukraine.
Critics suggest he has displayed naivety and has been easily deceived by Putin and those around him.
Witkoff works directly to the president and often appears to do the work that would usually be done by the secretary of state.
So it’s notable that on this occasion, in Geneva, Rubio has accompanied Witkoff.
It’s not clear how aligned their views on Ukraine are.
Keith Kellogg, envoy to Ukraine – who’s being sidelined<\/b>
The retired US general has been the envoy to Ukraine since Trump was re-elected.
Respected by Zelenskyy and by European countries, he has effectively been Trump’s man in Ukraine this year.
However, it was announced this week that he will step down in January.
He has been increasingly sidelined in the negotiations, and while he has a direct line to the president, he has struggled to gain traction with Rubio.
When he’s gone, Ukraine and Europe will have lost an ally in the White House.
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