Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that the United States “authored” a 28-point peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, after some critics said it would force Ukraine to make unreasonable concessions to Russia.
Mr. Rubio made the assertion on social media after Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota, said Mr. Rubio had earlier on Saturday tried to distance himself from the plan in a call with a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers attending a security conference in Canada. Mr. Rounds said Mr. Rubio had suggested that it was a Russian initiative, not a U.S. proposal.
“He made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” Mr. Rounds said Saturday at a news conference at the Halifax International Security Forum, speaking about Mr. Rubio. “It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan.”
Mr. Rounds said Mr. Rubio “made it clear that it was an opportunity to have received” the plan. “You now have one side being presented, and the opportunity for the other side to respond,” Mr. Rounds said.
Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman, on Saturday denied an allegation that the plan was essentially a Russian wish list, saying that this was “blatantly false.”
“As Secretary Rubio and the entire Administration has consistently maintained, this plan was authored by the United States, with input from both the Russians and Ukrainians,” Mr. Pigott wrote on social media.
The plan, which was initially negotiated between the United States and Russia without direct Ukrainian involvement and has not officially been made public but has been widely leaked, would involve Ukraine ceding land it currently holds, limiting the size of its military and foregoing any attempt to join NATO. In the past, Ukraine has rejected these steps as a capitulation, and Ukraine’s allies have pushed back against the proposal.
Ukrainian, European and American officials, including Mr. Rubio, were expected to meet in Switzerland on Sunday as part of President Trump’s push to get Kyiv to accept a peace plan to end the war with Russia.
“The peace proposal was authored by the U.S.,” Mr. Rubio said on Saturday on his personal social media account. “It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations,” he said, adding: “It is based on input from the Russian side. But it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”
In his social media post, Mr. Rubio did not confirm whether he had spoken to Mr. Rounds and other U.S. lawmakers at the Halifax forum. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Trump has given President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine until Thursday to agree to the plan, though he said Saturday it was not a final offer and suggested that the deadline could be extended if there was progress in talks.
U.S. officials said that talks between Washington and Kyiv over the plan would take place in Switzerland and that separate talks between the United States and Russia are already underway.
On Saturday, some of Kyiv’s main backers, including Germany, France and Britain, issued a statement affirming their commitment to Ukraine and pushing back against provisions in the plan that would strip the country of territory and limit the size of its armed forces.
Ukraine’s allies in Europe, as well as Canada and Japan, are willing to work on the peace plan “despite some reservations,” Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, who is in Johannesburg for the Group of 20 summit, said on social media on Sunday.
“However, before we start our work, it would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created,” he said.
Many Ukrainians have also said that to accept the peace proposal would amount to surrender.
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news.
The post Rubio Insists U.S. Authored the Ukraine Peace Plan appeared first on New York Times.
