As the weekend wrapped up, officials from the United States and Ukraine emerged from closed-door talks in Geneva sounding positive notes about diplomatic progress. Donald Trump wasn’t exactly playing a constructive role — the American president continued to whine online as the negotiations unfolded — but Secretary of State Marco Rubio boasted to reporters late Sunday, “This is the best meeting we’ve had so far” on ending Russia’s war.
But while those comments offered hints of hope, the days leading up to Sunday night’s comments were a shambolic mess, even by Trump administration standards.
Last week, details emerged about a 28-point “peace plan” that, according to multiple accounts, the White House had negotiated with Russia — without Ukrainian involvement. The blueprint was difficult to take seriously: It would not only require Ukraine to surrender a significant portion of its sovereign territory, it would also shrink the Ukrainian military and force the country to abandon weapons Russia doesn’t want it to have.
Despite the one-sided nature of the document, Donald Trump said Friday he wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to accept the pro-Russia deal by Thanksgiving.
And that’s when things started getting weird.
On Saturday morning, the president undermined his own position by declaring publicly that the approach he supported wasn’t his “final offer,” even as he pressed Kyiv to accept it. Soon after, as the 28-point plan faced domestic and international pushback, Rubio briefed senators on the administration’s efforts and said that the blueprint wasn’t actually backed by the White House at all, but rather was simply a Russian wish list for peace negotiations.
By Saturday night, the secretary of state was contradicting members of his own party, declaring in a statement that that the U.S. had, in fact, “authored” the 28-point plan to end the war in Ukraine that Democrats and Republicans both condemned. (Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it “would go down, frankly, as a historically bad deal, rivaling Neville Chamberlain giving in to Hitler before World War II.”)
The chaos did not go unnoticed. “Some people better get fired on Monday for the gross buffoonery we just witnessed over the last four days,” Republican Rep. Don Bacon wrote online. The Nebraska congressman, who’s retiring next year, added, “This hurt our country and undermined our alliances, and encouraged our adversaries.”
As this process advances (or at least tries to), there is another option on the table, which former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin summarized last week: “To end the conflict, Russia must leave Ukrainian territory.” Though this often goes ignored, Russia’s Vladimir Putin could end the war he started at any time by simply withdrawing his forces from the neighboring country he invaded without cause. If the White House doesn’t see this as a goal worth pursuing, perhaps it should explain why not.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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