November 24, 2025 05:16 AM IST
First published on: Nov 24, 2025 at 05:16 AM IST
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US special envoy Steve Witkoff, second left, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, sit at the beginning of talks with the Ukrainian delegation at the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Geneva. (AP)
The talks took place on Sunday in Geneva and the document prepared for the meeting proposes that Ukraine’s military be capped at 800,000 “in peacetime” instead of the 600,000 as mentioned in the plan backed by US President Donald Trump. The modified European plan also suggests that “negotiations on territorial swaps will start from the Line of Contact” instead of a pre-determined area which would act as “de facto Russian” as suggested by the US backed plan.
The modified proposal was reportedly drafted by the so-called European E3 powers – the UK, France and Germany. The modified version takes the US backed plan as its basis but goes through point by point as mentioned in the erstwhile plan and suggests changes or deletions accordingly, Reuters reported.
The modified version by the Europeans proposes that Ukraine receives a security guarantee from the United States which would act similar to Article 5 clause in North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The US also proposed to defreeze Russian assets in the West but the Europeans steer away from the suggestion, primarily in the European Union.
After the peace talks in Geneva on Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that a “tremendous amount of progress” has been achieved to finalise the US-backed 28-point peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Though Rubio added that “there’s still some work to be done” after the meeting with Ukrainian and European negotiators.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that there were “signals that President Trump’s administration is hearing us,” BBC reported.
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US special envoy Steve Witkoff, second left, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, sit at the beginning of talks with the Ukrainian delegation at the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Geneva. (AP) 
