AILSA CHANG, HOST:
President Trump had set a deadline of Thursday for Ukraine to accept a deal to give up territory to Russia, including territory that Russia has not captured on the battlefield in almost four years of war. But now that deadline seems to be shifting and the terms of the deal changing. The White House says there's been, quote, "tremendous progress" in talks this week, but more negotiations are needed. NPR's Michele Kelemen is here now to talk through some of this frenzied diplomacy. Hi, Michele.
MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE: Hi there, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, so where do things stand right now?
KELEMEN: Well, that deadline, as you mentioned, is slipping a bit. President Trump has said that he tends to extend deadlines if things are working out. And in this case, he says his team has been making progress. He's sending his envoy, Steve Witkoff, to meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. And his army secretary, Dan Driscoll, who's a longtime friend of Vice President JD Vance, is also kind of playing an unusual diplomatic role here, too. Driscoll has been in Abu Dhabi, shuttling between Russian and Ukrainian delegations. Ukrainian officials have suggested that President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could come to the U.S. soon to finalize this deal with Trump. But Trump now says that he hopes to meet both Zelenskyy and Putin but only when a deal is closer, so pushing this off a little bit more.
CHANG: OK, it's been a little bit confusing because we have seen so many different views from this White House on Ukraine. Like, Trump berated Ukraine's president earlier this year - right? - telling him he didn't hold any cards. And then a couple months ago, he said that he thought Ukraine could win back all of its territory. So I'm just wondering, like, how are people in Ukraine processing all of these mixed signals?
KELEMEN: Yeah, it's kind of whiplash, isn't it?
CHANG: Yeah.
KELEMEN: You know, I was listening to an online discussion today hosted by the Atlantic Council - it's a Washington think tank - and I heard one expert, Leslie Shedd, say that she thinks the Ukrainian president has been pretty smart about this. Take a listen.
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LESLIE SHEDD: He is working very hard to try to figure out how to say yes to peace, how to say yes to what the president has offered. I think that that is smart because I, bluntly, think that there's going to be almost no deal that Putin will agree to.
KELEMEN: And her view about Russian President Vladimir Putin was shared by other speakers in that panel, including Steve Biegun, who was deputy secretary of state during Trump's first term.
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STEVE BIEGUN: The reality is Putin doesn't want a ceasefire. Putin doesn't want a negotiation. Putin doesn't want peace. Putin wants Ukraine.
KELEMEN: Biegun says it's a good thing that Trump wants an end to this war, but he says the U.S. really needs to be realistic about this and keep the pressure on Putin. But Trump, you know, really seems in a rush right now. He's also under a lot of pressure from some in his MAGA movement to focus more on home - at home and to stop supporting Ukraine. And, of course, Russia puts a lot of pressure back on him, too.
CHANG: Right. And then over the weekend, a 28-point plan was leaked, and it called for Ukraine to give up territory. So do we know if that part has changed?
KELEMEN: I mean, the one that was leaked read like a wish list for Russia. Some experts even suggested that it was part of a Russian disinformation campaign meant to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Europe. Trump says it was his plan. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also said that, and he rushed off to Geneva last weekend to sit down with the Ukrainians to put aside some of the more controversial points, like demands that were made of Western European allies. Rubio said he made some progress. The president says it's been fine-tuned. It seems to be a shorter deal on the table now, with more talk about, you know, a ceasefire along the current lines. But that's something that Trump proposed before, and Russia wasn't interested. So it's not really clear kind of what deal is going to emerge from this and whether Russia is going to agree to it.
And I have to say, just to remind you, that the Russians, throughout all of this, have continued to carry out deadly drone and missile strikes on Ukraine, killing Ukrainian civilians, including children, and targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure. And that's really another reason why U.S. officials say this needs to be solved quickly before another tough winter ahead of war.
CHANG: Indeed. That is NPR's Michele Kelemen speaking to us from the State Department. Thank you so much, Michele.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF CLIPSE, ET AL. SONG, "ALL THINGS CONSIDERED") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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