David E. Sanger

And you heard that directly from the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who said outright, this isn't just about Ukraine.

This is about the security of Europe.

It's about the security of NATO nations.

That's absolutely right.

So on Sunday, there are 11 hours of meetings.

Witkoff is there.

Jared Kushner is there.

It's pretty heated from what we hear, particularly with the Ukrainians.

But magically, the 28-point plan turned into a 20-point plan.

suddenly gone from this was a limit on the Ukrainian military to be no more than 600,000 troops.

Suddenly gone from this was that NATO troops could never be based in Ukraine.

So he clearly was trying to wrench this document back to the middle in an effort to save the peace process.

But along the way, he may have lost the Russians.

Well, clearly the president believed that by setting up this Thanksgiving deadline that he was going to rush something through and he would have an agreement.

And a cynic might say that the president was interested in speed because he wants to add an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to that list for the Nobel Peace Prize that he believes he's been nominated for for next year.

And he regularly made the absolutely correct point that it is one of the great human tragedies that we're losing thousands of Ukrainians and Russians every single week here.

And he just wants to get to something that will stop the killing.

The question is, at what cost and how much pain does he believe Putin will put up with?

That's exactly right, Rachel.

If you think about how former President Biden talked about this war from the beginning of the invasion, he always said, we're here to reestablish the rules of the post-World War II order.