Updated: 25 Nov 2025 06:50 AM (GMT)Updated: 25 Nov 2025 06:50 AM (GMT)
Here’s where things stand on Tuesday, November 25.
Trump’s plan
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said a proposed peace plan now under discussion with the United States and Europe has incorporated “correct” points, but sensitive issues still need to be discussed with US President Donald Trump.
Zelenskyy added that if negotiations proceeded on resolving the war, “there must be no missiles, no massive strikes on Ukraine and our people.”
Trump also hinted at new progress in the talks, which took place in Geneva. “Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine??? Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening,” he wrote on Truth Social.
A senior official told the AFP news agency that the US pressed Ukraine to accept the deal in Geneva, despite Kyiv’s protests that the plan conceded too much to Moscow. The official said Washington did not directly threaten to cut off aid if Kyiv rejected its deal, but that Ukraine understood this was a distinct possibility.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt clarified that there is no meeting scheduled between Trump and Zelenskyy this week, amid reports of a possible trip by the Ukrainian leader to the US capital.
Leavitt told US broadcaster Fox News that “a couple of points of disagreement” remain between the US and Ukraine on a potential deal to end Russia’s invasion.
Leavitt also pushed back against criticism, including from within Trump’s Republican Party, that the president is favouring Russia in efforts to end the war in Ukraine, describing those statements as “complete and total fallacy”. She said the US president was “hopeful and optimistic” that a plan could be worked out.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would wait to see how talks between the US and Ukraine on a potential peace plan pan out, and would not be commenting on media reports about such a serious and complex issue.
But Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said a European counter-proposal to a US 28-point peace plan for Ukraine was “not constructive” and that it simply did not work for Moscow.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said there was more work to do to establish a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine, but added that progress was being made.
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, too, welcomed progress made at the meetings in Geneva, but added that major issues remain to be resolved.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said no deal regarding Ukraine can be allowed to undermine the security of Poland and Europe; on the contrary, it should strengthen it.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the talks in Geneva on amending Trump’s 28-point plan to end the war with Russia had produced a “decisive success” for Europeans. Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said that to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine, its borders cannot be changed by force and there cannot be limitations on Ukraine’s military that would invite further Russian aggression.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Russia’s Vladimir Putin in a phone call that Ankara will contribute to any diplomatic effort to facilitate direct contact between Russia and Ukraine and to reach a “just and lasting” peace, his office said.
Fighting
Three people were killed and 10 injured in a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Rostov region, Governor Yury Slyusar said. The Russian Ministry of Defence said 249 Ukrainian drones were downed over Russian regions overnight. Six other people were injured in Russia’s Krasnodar region as a result of a drone attack, Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said.
Officials in Russia’s Krasnodar border region said on Tuesday that they were assessing the damage after the “massive” Ukrainian attack that wounded at least six people and damaged some 20 homes.
Ukrainian drones damaged residential buildings in Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and injured at least four people in successive attacks on the area, regional officials said early on Tuesday.
Russian forces launched drone and missile attacks on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, targeting energy infrastructure, killing at least one person and wounding seven.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said the country’s air defences shot down 10 drones en route to Moscow, a day after a Ukrainian strike on a power plant cut off heating in a town near the capital. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said emergency services were clearing up sites where debris from drones had fallen.
The Defence Ministry added that a total of 50 Ukrainian drones were downed across the Moscow, Bryansk, Kaluga and Kursk regions, as well as Crimea and over the waters of the Black Sea.
Politics
Polish prosecutors have arrested and charged a third Ukrainian man suspected of collaborating with Russia to sabotage a rail track, authorities said. Two other Ukrainians, who fled to Belarus, had already been charged in absentia over the blast on the Warsaw-Lublin line connecting Warsaw to the Ukrainian border.
Two young street musicians who were jailed for more than a month in Russia for singing anti-Kremlin songs have left the country after being released from detention, according to Russian media reports. Vocalist Diana Loginova, 18, and guitarist Alexander Orlov, 22, were arrested on October 15 in central St Petersburg after an impromptu street performance deemed critical of Putin and the government.
Energy
Oil prices climbed about 1 percent on mounting doubts about whether Russia will get a peace deal with Ukraine that will boost Moscow’s oil exports. Brent futures rose 81 cents, or 1.3 percent, to settle at $63.37 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude gained 78 cents, or 1.3 percent, to settle at $58.84.
Four opposition Democratic US senators, including Elizabeth Warren, said the lax enforcement by the Trump administration of sanctions on Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 export terminal has allowed China to buy discounted liquefied natural gas and has helped Moscow fund the war in Ukraine.
A heating and power plant in Russia’s Moscow region has resumed operations after shutting down due to a fire caused by a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday, regional Governor Andrei Vorobyov said.
Russia’s Black Sea port of Tuapse resumed oil product exports last week after a two-week suspension following Ukrainian drone attacks, while the local oil refinery has restarted processing crude, the Reuters news agency reported, citing industry sources and data.
Russian state oil and gas revenue may fall in November by about 35 percent, from the corresponding month in 2024, to 520 billion roubles ($6.6bn) due to cheaper oil and a stronger local currency, according to calculations and analysis by Reuters.
