The Ukraine-Russia Deal That Wasn’t

Ever-shifting stipulations: While Ukrainian and American delegations made headway in Geneva, Switzerland, hammering out a peace deal with Russia to end Vladimir Putin’s bombardment of Ukraine by the Thanksgiving deadline set by President Donald Trump, Russia bombed the crap out of Kyiv.

The plan keeps shifting. What was once a 28-point peace plan has now been shrunken to just 20 points; the Thanksgiving deadline, which was always overly ambitious, has been scrapped. The most important things to hammer out—limits on how large the Ukrainian military may be in the future, a ban on NATO troops inside Ukraine, where new territorial boundaries might be drawn—haven’t really been focused on at this stage. But it seems Trump’s top guys—Secretary of State Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff, and oddly gifted diplomat slash son-in-law Jared Kushner—”believed that the combination of Ukraine’s unfolding corruption scandal and Russia’s incremental battlefield gains put new pressure on [Ukraine] to cut a deal,” per The New York Times. They ended up meeting, quite a few times, with Russian diplomats, and the deal that ultimately came together looked a lot more favorable to Russia than Ukraine.

“By any measure, the administration’s rollout of the new plan was maladroit at best,” argues The New York Times. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio tried to downplay the planniness of the plan, calling it merely “a list of potential ideas” for how to broker peace.

The deal would have been one with “no punishment for Russia,” per NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley. “Russia would be welcomed back into the international fold, sanctions lifted, and there’s a joint Russian-American Arctic exploration deal in this plan, so possible big business opportunities, rare earth minerals and all that.” Ukraine, on the other hand, would have been expected to give up territory in the Donbas, and be limited from aspirations of ever joining NATO.

Now, Trump is trying to back Volodymyr Zelenskyy into a bit of a corner, saying if he refuses negotiations he’ll be free “to fight his little heart out.”

It might sorta be working: “Today our delegation returned from Geneva after negotiations with the American side and European partners,” wrote Zelenskyy on X. “Now the list of necessary steps to end the war can become doable. As of now, after Geneva, there are fewer points—no longer 28—and many of the right elements have been taken into account in this framework.” If you say so, sir.

Scenes from New York: I hadn’t realized bodega cats were illegal. (Torn between somewhat disliking cats and the fact that they’re probably useful for rat control.)

QUICK HITS

• “Unlike home birth—birth at home with a midwife in attendance—freebirth means giving birth without any medical support,” report Sirin Kale and Lucy Osborne for The Guardian. “FBS promotes a version widely seen as extreme, even among freebirth advocates: it is anti-ultrasound, which it falsely claims harms babies, downplays serious medical conditions and promotes wild pregnancy, meaning pregnancy without any prenatal care.” Free Birth Society “is not, by any conventional definition, a cult. But former FBS members often use the language of high-control groups to describe the hold they say they felt the organization had over them, leading them to behave in ways they now find hard to understand.” And the death rate for infants of mothers involved in FBS is extraordinarily high.
• The “Department of Government Efficiency has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate, ending an initiative launched with fanfare as a symbol of Trump’s pledge to slash the government’s size but which critics say delivered few measurable savings,” reports Reuters. “‘That doesn’t exist,’ Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about DOGE’s status.…The OPM, the federal government’s human resources office, has since taken over many of DOGE’s functions, according to Kupor.” And “at least two prominent DOGE employees are now involved with the National Design Studio, a new body created through an executive order signed by Trump in August. That body is headed by Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, and Trump’s order directed him to beautify government websites.”
• “The White House expects to soon unveil a health policy framework that includes a two-year extension of Obamacare subsidies due to expire at the end of next month and new limits on eligibility, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the unannounced plans,” reports Politico. 
• “I might be the only American on X,” writes River Page.
• President Donald Trump plans on talking directly to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro soon, reports Axios. (Wow, two socialists in one month? He’s on a roll.)