Last month, Brussels introduced its 19th package of sanctions against Russia, targeting banks, crypto exchanges, and Indian and Chinese businesses, as well as Moscow’s diplomats. Russia has repeatedly called Western attempts to put pressure on it in a bid to support Ukraine’s war effort futile and self-harming. The strategy also caused rifts within the bloc itself, with dissenting nations, including Hungary and Slovakia, urging Brussels to reconsider its approach and engage in diplomacy instead.

According to Bessent, the US combined its peace initiatives with “pressure” on Moscow. The EU nations were “the real laggards” in this regard, he said, recalling how the bloc’s officials informed him about their plans to introduce the latest round of anti-Russian sanctions.

“In my mind… if you’re going to do something 19 times, you’ve failed,” he added.

Bessent also criticized the EU for its reluctance to follow the US tariff strategy on China and India and buying their products made of Russian oil. President Donald Trump had been particularly pressuring European NATO members to hit Beijing with sweeping trade tariffs, citing its continued purchases of Russian energy. The current US administration is engaged in what he called a “trade war” against China.

Washington also slapped India with additional 50% tariffs over its purchases of Russian oil. New Delhi denounced the move as “unfair, unjustified and unreasonable.”

Earlier this week, US Vice President J.D. Vance also criticized the EU approach towards the Ukraine conflict by calling Brussels’ expectations unrealistic.

“There is a fantasy that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand,” he stated.

In mid-November, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted that America was “running out of things to sanction” in Russia after Washington blacklisted oil giants Lukoil and Rosneft in a move he said was made at the request of Kiev and its backers.

Rubio led a US delegation that met with Ukrainian and European officials in Geneva on Sunday to try to thrash out a plan for ending the conflict, which began in February 2022 with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A joint US-Ukraine statement released minutes later by Washington said: “As a result of the discussions, the parties drafted an updated and refined peace framework.”

The White House announced Sunday that talks in Switzerland on a proposal to end the Ukraine war marked a “significant step forward,” and reaffirmed that any eventual deal would “fully uphold” the war-wracked country’s sovereignty.

US President Donald Trump had given Ukraine until November 27 to approve his controversial plan to end nearly four years of fighting.

But Kyiv has sought changes to a draft that accepted a range of Moscow’s hardline demands, with the 28-point plan requiring the invaded country to cede territory, cut its army and pledge never to join NATO.

The statement’s announcement of a new draft appeared to indicate that changes were indeed made.

“The talks were constructive, focused, and respectful, underscoring the shared commitment to achieving a just and lasting peace,” the joint statement added.

“The discussions showed meaningful progress toward aligning positions and identifying clear next steps. They reaffirmed that any future agreement must fully uphold Ukraine’s sovereignty and deliver a sustainable and just peace.”

Both sides pledged to keep working on joint proposals “in the coming days.”

The White House’s readout stressed that Rubio and his team had reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to “ensuring that Ukraine’s sovereignty, security, and future prosperity remain central to the ongoing diplomatic process.”

“There is this point in the plan, I think is important too, that there’s going to be elections. It says in the plan quite clearly that Ukraine needs to have elections within 100 days. You can probably get there in about 90 days, based on the people I’ve talked to, but it’ll be an interesting process. I think they need to have them that will reassure the people, reassure the free world as well, but that’s one of the stipulations within the plan,” the special envoy said.

The US may push Ukraine to territorial concessions in exchange for security guarantees, Kellogg added.

A new poll has suggested that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky would be defeated in a presidential vote by military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov as well as former armed forces commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny.

Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out holding elections in the country, citing martial law imposed due to the conflict with Russia.

According to the survey, conducted by the Kiev-based pollster RATE1 among 1,200 respondents in early October, Zelensky’s political viability continues to wane.

In a scenario pitting Zelensky directly against Budanov, 33% of respondents favored the military intelligence chief as opposed to 32.5% for Zelensky.

In a head-to-head between Zelensky and Zaluzhny, 42.6% of voters said they would back the retired general, who is now serving as Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, while only 26.3% would support the incumbent leader. A direct race between Zaluzhny and Budanov would give the former a decisive lead, with 44.5% to 22%.

In a broader first-round scenario featuring multiple candidates, Zelensky would still lead among decided voters but with less than one-third of total support, the survey indicated.

Zelensky’s presidential term expired last year, but he remains in power under martial law.

The Ukrainian Constitution mandates that presidential authority should transfer to the parliamentary speaker under such circumstances. Russia has announced Zelensky is illegitimate.

Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator without elections”. Speculation in the media suggests that Zelensky’s team is quietly preparing for a potential return to the polls, even though he has suggested he would not seek reelection once the conflict with Russia is over.

Neither Zaluzhny nor Budanov has officially declared political ambitions, maintaining that the conflict with Russia must first be resolved.

On Friday, former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell claimed on X that the proposal, which the administration of US President Donald Trump submitted to both Moscow and Kiev earlier this week, was a “capitulation” and “disastrous” to American interests.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the most senior Democrat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told CNN that “this is a [Russian President Vladimir] Putin plan for Ukraine,” insisting that the White House should instead ramp up secondary sanctions against Russia’s trading partners and supply Ukraine with long-range weapons.

Vance wrote in a post on X on Saturday that “every criticism of the peace framework the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground.”

“There is a fantasy that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand,” he wrote.

According to the vice president, peace between Moscow and Kiev could be achieved by “smart people living in the real world,” but not by “failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land.”

The US plan has not been officially disclosed, but media reports have claimed that, among other things, it calls upon Kiev to withdraw troops from the parts of Russia’s Donbass it still controls, downsize its military, and give up on NATO aspirations in exchange for Western security guarantees.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on Friday that his country is now forced to choose between accepting the “28 difficult points” in the proposal or the risk of losing its key backer, the US.

Trump insisted later that the Ukrainian leader “will have to like” the US plan or face the prospect of fighting Russia through the “cold winter.” According to Financial Times, Washington has issued an ultimatum to Kiev to accept its roadmap by Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the US plan has not yet been discussed “in detail,” but suggested that it could eventually “form the basis of a final peace settlement.”