Kira Rudik, leader of Ukraine’s liberal Holos party, says the progress made between the United States and Ukraine in Geneva on President Donald Trump’s draft peace plan is “pretty reassuring,” but warns that two crucial issues still need clear answers.
Rudik, a member of the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, told Newsweek that Trump must spell out how he intends to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to sign a peace deal, and how the United States will make sure any future security guarantees for Ukraine are truly reliable.
Talks in Geneva over the weekend produced what Washington and Kyiv described in a joint statement as “substantial progress” on Trump’s draft peace plan. The proposal was “updated” and “refined” from an earlier version that European allies and Kyiv had criticized as leaning too far in Russia’s favor.
The current negotiations represent the closest a potential peace agreement has come since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Trump has spent months trying to broker an end to the war, mainly through diplomatic outreach to Moscow and pressure on Kyiv via threats to withhold vital U.S. assistance.
‘Ukraine Has Done Everything by the Book’
Rudik’s pro-European Holos party holds 19 of the 450 seats in the Rada. She said Putin has so far refused even 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 described the inclusion of U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in the draft 28-point deal as a “breakthrough,” but stressed that implementation is everything.
“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.”
The Budapest Memorandum and related agreements, negotiated between 1993 and 1996, led Ukraine to surrender its nuclear weapons. Russia violated those commitments in 2014 when it annexed Crimea.
Ukrainians, Rudik added, “need to know how this time is different and that these potential security guarantees will be really executable. 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 Waits for Updated Draft as Trump Talks Up ‘Big Progress’
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said at a Monday press briefing that Moscow had not yet officially received the revised draft of the peace plan emerging from the Geneva talks. Russia had previously welcomed the initial version, with Putin calling it a “basis” for an agreement.
Trump, meanwhile, promoted “big progress” in a post on Truth Social on Monday, after criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over the weekend for what he saw as insufficient gratitude toward the United States for its support.
“Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine???” Trump wrote. “Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!”
There are currently no publicly known direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Instead, the United States has been engaging separately with both sides as it works to shape the latest version of the peace plan.
