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Secretary Rubio Briefs the Press in Geneva on the Ukraine Peace Framework, Nov. 23, 2025

November 23, 2025 · U.S. Department of State · 0:08:19

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Secretary of State Marco Rubio briefed the press in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 23, 2025, after a day of talks with a high-level Ukrainian delegation on the administration’s peace framework, according to the State Department broadcast (uploaded November 24).

Rubio said the work began almost three weeks earlier with a foundational document — 28 points, or 26 depending on the version — built from both sides’ known priorities and red lines, and narrowed over the previous 96 hours with extensive engagement in Kyiv, including the Secretary of the Army meeting stakeholders across Ukraine’s political spectrum. The day’s goal, he said, was to narrow the open items, and “we have achieved that today in a very substantial way.” He called it “probably the most productive day we have had on this issue” in ten months of engagement, while declining to declare finality: a couple of issues remain — some semantics or language, some requiring higher-level decisions — but “the items that remain open are not insurmountable.”

He said items involving the equities or role of the EU or NATO were segregated onto a separate track after a meeting that day with European national security advisors, since those require European input. Pressed on timing, he said the deadline is as soon as possible — “we would love it to be Thursday” — and on Russia, that “obviously the Russians get a vote here”: any U.S.-Ukrainian agreement must still be taken to Moscow. He declined throughout to discuss specific provisions, including territory and security guarantees, on the ground that the document is living and changes daily with input.

Why it matters

The Geneva briefing is the peace framework’s public status report at its most advanced point to that date: the Secretary fixing on the record what had narrowed, what remained open, and the two-track structure — bilateral U.S.-Ukraine items first, European and NATO items separately — that the endgame negotiations would have to follow.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the Secretary’s November 23, 2025 assessment that the remaining open items in the Ukraine peace framework are “not insurmountable,” with technical answers expected within 24 hours and a presidential agreement still required on both the Ukrainian and Russian sides. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, “Secretary Rubio Remarks to Press” (official upload, embedded above; Geneva, Switzerland). Remarks as delivered 2025-11-23; transcript reviewed in the site’s private research store; full transcript at state.gov.