The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Administration Pushes Russia-Friendly Plan To End War In Ukraine

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

The Trump administration is attempting to push through a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia that many have criticized as heavily favoring Russia. We discuss the proposal and the chances for a lasting peace.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and national security correspondent Greg Myre.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Teresa in Brunswick, Georgia. I'm on my way to my volunteer shift at the Friends of the Library- Used Bookstore. This podcast was recorded at... 105 p.m. on Monday, November 24th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but one thing will still be true. Libraries will still be magical places. Okay, enjoy the show.

I like libraries, too, true. some. Yes. Libraries are magical places, though I'm too impatient for libraries. I always want my book to be available. You can if you get the app. You can like download it right away. They're awesome. Those library apps are wonderful. They are wonderful, but there's often a backlog for the books I want to read. That's true. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I also cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. Today on the show, the Trump administration is making a big push to try to cement a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. And Greg, I want to read you a social media post from the president

this morning. He writes, is it really possible that big progress is being made in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine? Three question marks. So I ask you that question, Greg. Well, if the president doesn't know, how should the rest of us know? He's the one driving this train. I think the short answer based on what we know is, no, it doesn't seem like big progress is being made. A big effort is being made. But it seemed like as some details started leaking out a few days ago of this 28-point proposal, it was written very much with the kinds of things that Vladimir Putin and Russia have been asking for for years now, even before Trump came into the White House. And it was widely seen as that way. And the White House has kind of been defensive and said, no, no, no, we helped author this plan. And, you know, now we've had all these different groups and factions complaining about it. So there's a lot of effort and a lot of

noise, but so far I don't think we're seeing big progress. Greg, there was this big meeting over the weekend in Geneva to talk about the plan. Who was there? What came out of it? Yeah, at the core was U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Ukrainians trying to sort through all this. And it seems like they took that 28-point plan, which was very heavily weighted towards Russia and they've tried to rework it. We still don't know what's in this updated version. I suspect it will start to come out in some form fairly soon here. But it's already created these divisions between the White House, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, even Republican senators. So it kind of seems they went at this a little backwards that maybe it should have

had a unified proposal between the U.S., Ukrainians, Europeans, and then taken that to Russia. So we're still sort of backing into this and not quite sure where we stand. But anyway, it was the U.S. and the Ukrainians meeting in Geneva this weekend, and that's where we stand now. So, Franco, I read the first half of the president's post. Now I would like to give you the second half of his post. He says, quote, don't believe it until you see it. But something good just may be happening. Some hedging of bets there.

But what is the administration saying about all of this? I will say, I do think it's positive that. There are talks going. At least the analysts I speak to see it as a good thing that the United States is still involved, considering that just a couple of months ago, there are a lot of questions whether the United States was going to kind of exit its role as leadership in the negotiations. The don't believe it until you see it part of that social media posts is a good dose of honesty about where we have been and how many times this has happened. And there's been so many times where the president or others have touted great progress that they're close to, you know, an agreement is, you know, just down the tunnel that there's going to be a ceasefire, all these big ideas and goals and expectations only for things to be kind of just, you know, undercut at the last minute. I've heard this before. It's Lucy pulling

the football out from Charlie Brown. So I do think folks are more cautious. And I think Trump is trying to like touch on that because who knows what Russia is going to do in this situation because so far they have always kind of stopped at the last minute and not made the moves that the United States want and certainly not what Ukraine wants. So headed into this past weekend, the talk was there is a Thursday deadline. We need this done by Thanksgiving, applying pressure to Ukraine. After this weekend, that seems less clear too, right, Greg? Yeah. Trump set this Thursday deadline. And for no particular reason, other than it's Thanksgiving, it didn't seem there was a real need or reason. Rubio has already kind of backed off this and said, well, if it's positive, we can keep

talking. So I really don't see this as a realistic deadline. Again, it is a serious big push, but there's nothing about Thursday that's special and this couldn't go on if they're making progress. To me, the bigger issue is, I don't see anything terribly new here. We saw the rush proposal. These are the things the Russians have been asking for. Again, forever and ever. Ukraine has said, we're not going to give up territory or we need really concrete security guarantees. I'm not seeing anything that would encourage either side to compromise or change positions they've held essentially since the beginning of the war. So the White House put out a statement last night. It's called a readout. And this happens all the time after a big meeting. It's sort of a diplomatic statement

about what happened. And it included this line, which I'm hoping that you guys can translate out of jargon and into English. It says the conversation was candid, detailed, and conducted in a spirit of partnership and shared purpose. So I'm rolling my eyes here because that's diplomatic boilerplate. There is truth in at this time. This was not just a casual meeting. Rubio went to Geneva for the weekend. There was serious talks in Kiev between senior U.S. officials. officials and senior Ukrainian officials. So it's not a casual meeting. There is this big effort. I'm quite sure the Ukrainians, well, the Ukrainians have said, we raised our issues that we're just not going to give up territory. We need real security guarantees. So yeah, I think serious tough issues are

being raised here. Again, is there progress? We're not seeing that so far. I do want to ask about Ukrainian politics because Russia is increasing its bombing of Kiev and other places. And Zelensky's just under a lot of political pressure at home, Greg. Yeah, absolutely. Russia has, with its increased drone campaign this year, been hitting harder and harder with its airstrikes. What generally happens is they'll pick a couple of cities and they get hit very, very hard one night and then a couple nights later someplace else gets hit very hard. And then we get into winter where the Russians really go after Ukraine's electricity grid. Ukrainians are very good about repairing it, keeping it going, but the effect is cumulative. And each winter we go through gets harder and harder for the

Ukrainians to keep that going. Zelensky is also facing political pressure from some corruption scandals, which have reared up periodically and he's either going through another one now. And just the limited resources that Ukraine has and how long can they continue to fight at this level. So all of these things are increasing the pressure on Zelensky and on Ukraine. How much longer can it continue to fight at this level? And that's exactly what the Russians want to do is just increase the pressure and through attrition, get Ukraine to a point where it can no longer resist the way it has for nearly four years. Franco, there was this question of whether the U.S. still had a stomach for it. There's also a question of Europe, but it sounds like they're still all in. Oh, yeah. I mean, Europe's very much. And that's,

I mean, I think that's why they have so many concerns about what the United States is doing. They're concerned about the plan that was put out and how heavily leaning towards Russia it was. They're also concerned, as we saw a few months ago, that the United States could actually pull out. Certainly, the analysts that I speak to feel like United States is the only one with the leverage over both Ukraine and Russia in order to end this. I do think European leaders are seeing their own constituents getting a little fatigue for this. So they are also looking for an out as well. There's kind of this same right-leaning country-centric movement in Europe that is going on very much similar to in the United States. And I think Europeans want an end to this, but they have big concerns about the future and Russia doing this again.

And they see Ukraine as kind of the first buffer to potentially stopping Russia from, continuing its encroachment on other European countries. Remember back to the beginning of the war, will Europe stick around? Will Europe kind of give up or play any instrumental role here? Well, the fact is they have. And then the Trump administration has said, this really is Europe's war. You need to do more. And the Europeans have been doing more.

And in fact, the initial reaction right today is the Europeans feel left out. They've been asked to do more in terms of peace, negotiations. arming, funding Ukraine. And here the Trump administration seems to be working with Russia on a peace plan and cutting out the Europeans. Europeans are asking, how do you expect us to do more if you're not including us fundamentally in any solution? And that Europe would in fact bear the brunt. It would face the security consequences of however this war may end, would be asked to pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine. So Europe is very much in. And in some of the comments, you know, the Estonian defense minister was asked about the peace plan. He said, I would rewrite everything.

The Polish prime minister said, well, before we started, it'd be good to know who authored this plan and where it was created. So the Europeans are feeling very much cut out and do want to play a larger role here. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And we'll have more in a moment. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hit. hidden fees. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and C's apply. And we're back. And we've been talking about President Trump's renewed effort to get peace in Ukraine. Franco, what does the president's goal seem to be here? I think the president is being honest and

true when he says that he wants to end the war and end the dying. You know, we've seen over the years, him raising concern about people dying, especially children dying. That says, In regards to this peace plan, he's looking to fulfill a campaign promise. He wants an agreement. He wants to be able to declare a victory and to say this war is over. Now, he's less concerned about the details, how you get there. And I think you're seeing that with this 28-point plan. He's not including the Europeans and the discussions because he feels like that will just make it harder to reach yes. He doesn't necessarily care that much about the details. He just wants the answer to be yes. And I think you see that in so many of the other agreements that he has brokered around the world. You know, he talks a lot about the seven, eight agreements that he reached and stopped or ended fighting and created peace. Well, in most of those, fighting still continues. You can even take Gaza where, you know, he brokered a, you know, a ceasefire. But that is still a very complicated situation.

So for him, details are less important, but they are very, very important for Russia and Ukraine in this battle. I mean, and that's why you see Russia wanting, you know, this strategic territory. They want to make sure that Ukraine is never a part of NATO. And Ukraine is so insistent about detailed security guarantees to ensure that Russia never does this again. I do want to talk about the domestic U.S. politics here and what might be driving this push. President Trump has gotten a fair bit of criticism that you've reported on, Franco, about focusing too much on foreign policy and not enough. on domestic policy. Yeah, it's been a big issue for Trump, especially in the last few weeks. I mean, we just had a medium-sized election where the Democrats kind of shellacked Republicans. And that

raised a lot of questions about President Trump working too much on all these peace deals. I mean, I think at the time of that election, he had been on like three or four trips. You know, the number of foreign trips compared to domestic trips was pretty incredible the amount. That created a lot of consternation among some of his traditional supporters in the MAGA universe. Folks like Marjorie Taylor Green, folks like Stephen Bannon, who are raising concerns that Trump was not focusing enough on the domestic concerns of people. And, you know, you look at the grocery prices and the cost of living and inflation, people are very concerned about those domestic issues. And Trump has not been at least public facing as focused on those issues.

and that has raised a lot of concerns. And that election a few weeks ago, you've kind of seen a turn by Trump to do that, which is also why I find it interesting that he's back at it in the international sphere again. And just on a related note, I would note the pushback he's getting from Republicans, and particularly in the Senate. This weekend, there was a security conference in Canada. And there were a lot of senators, Republicans and Democrats speaking there. For example, Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, said he and others spoke. spoke with Marco Rubio and said, he made it very clear to us that we were the recipients of this peace proposal, that it was, in fact, coming from Russia. And then Rubio shot back on social media

that saying, no, no, the U.S. authored this plan. Just a lot of Republican senators as well as Democrats saying, this looks like a Russian plan. So he's hearing it from his fellow Republicans in the Senate. And this is sort of remarkable because there's just been so little daylight between President Trump and members of this party in Congress. But here in this moment, there is some daylight. You know, there's always been strong bipartisan support in Congress for Ukraine. Even with the most recent military aid package, which was approved last year, it passed with very solid majorities in both houses. You know, we haven't had a vote on that in the Trump administration, so we don't know where it stands. But the point is, there have been a lot of Republicans in the

House and in the Senate who've been backing Ukraine support since day one. Yeah, I mean, I'd agree with all of that. I think you are starting to see a little bit of wiggle room, though, between Republicans and the president on this issue, as well as, you know, the Jeffrey Epstein case. It's fascinating to watch President Trump continue to get so involved with these foreign policy issues. When he ran on promising to pull the United States out of all these foreign intervention issues and kind of focus more on these domestic matters. And there's really three big ones at this moment, Ukraine, which we're discussing today, and then Gaza is still a very shaky ceasefire. And then, of course, Venezuela. And just as a statement

of fact, the Trump administration is pushing very hard in Ukraine to get a deal and working on Venezuela, but we don't know what they're ultimately trying to achieve there. But it certainly raises the notion that Trump is suggesting that Russia could. essentially do what it wants to do in Ukraine, then turn, the U.S. could do what it wants to do in Venezuela, and they wouldn't get in each other's way. One thing to keep an eye on, again, nobody said that directly or openly, but the Trump administration is pushing very hard on both of these fronts at the same time, while having said that they want to focus more on this hemisphere than, say, Europe or Ukraine. And there's a huge buildup of American military might, essentially

off the shore of Venezuela at this point, which is pretty remarkable coming from a president who said he didn't want more foreign wars and didn't want these entanglements. And now there's this massive buildup. Yeah, we're seeing a buildup that we haven't seen in decades in Latin America, 15,000 U.S. forces, roughly half of them on Puerto Rico, half of them on ships. The world's biggest aircraft carrier is in the region. If you're just trying to deal with unarmed boats, allegedly that have drugs on them, you don't need that level of firepower. So Trump has not said explicitly what he wants to do. He's talked very much about getting rid of the Venezuelan president, Nicholas Maduro, but it's a massive amount of firepower that we have not seen in a very long time

in that region. I'll just add that, you know, I mean, I think you are seeing that kind of focus on foreign issues. That said, you know, we are still a year out from the midterms. I do wonder sometimes and speak to people about this, that Trump may see kind of a deadline in a way, that he only has so much more time to be talking about these international issues. Because soon, come to spring, come the summer, he's going to have to be focused more on the domestic issues for the midterms. All right, we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I also cover the White House. And I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

Thank you.