Talks with Ukraine on the US-drafted peace plan yielded “tremendous” progress, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said as conversations ended for the day.
He said the US wanted to end the war “soon” but suggested Washington was flexible with its timeline rather than sticking to the Thursday deadline President Donald Trump had mentioned before.
Sir Keir Starmer and other leaders had pushed back against the US-drafted plan, raising concerns about proposals to make Kyiv limit its armed forces and give up territory and its path to Nato membership.
They called Washington’s plan “a basis” that required further work in a joint statement on Saturday after talks at the G20 in South Africa.
The UK’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell and his German and French counterparts were also in Geneva for talks on the proposal.
Mr Rubio on Sunday would not go into detail on which points are still under discussion, but acknowledged that a “final end” to the war would require Ukraine to feel “safe” from being invaded by Russia in future.
He said Mr Trump was “quite pleased” at the progress, after the US president had earlier posted online that Ukraine’s leadership had expressed “zero gratitude” for his country’s efforts.
“I feel very optimistic that we can get something done here, because we made a tremendous amount of progress,” Mr Rubio told reporters, adding that talks would continue on Monday.
Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky said in a post on X that there are “signals that Trump’s team is hearing us”.
Sir Keir had his second call with the US president in as many days on Sunday, and No 10 said the leaders agreed that “we all must work together at this critical moment to bring about a just and lasting peace”.
Mr Rubio said earlier that US and Ukrainian teams were “making some changes” in the hope of “narrowing the differences” between the US and Ukraine.
The 28-point plan is said to have been negotiated by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Kremlin representative Kirill Dmitriev, with Kyiv and European allies left out of the process.
The US State Department dismissed as “blatantly false” claims from senators that Mr Rubio told them the plan was a “wish list” from Russia.
Mr Trump’s only comment on the talks was an earlier Truth Social post in which he said: “Ukraine ‘leadership’ has expressed zero gratitude for our efforts and Europe continues to buy oil from Russia.”
Mr Zelensky later wrote that he is “grateful to every leader and to everyone around the world who supports Ukraine and our principled stances”.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander earlier said that allies of Ukraine need to “find a way to secure that ceasefire and open up space for meaningful negotiations”.
Sir Keir Starmer has pointed to the importance of an article five security guarantee – Nato’s mutual defence provision under which an attack on one member is an attack on the entire bloc – in the US plan.
This and his one-on-one discussions with Mr Trump on Ukraine make it clear to that the US leader wants a “just and lasting peace”, the Prime Minister said.
