President Donald Trump inserted fresh tension into the high-stakes Ukraine-Russia peace talks Sunday, publicly accusing Kyiv’s leaders of showing “zero gratitude” for U.S. support just as U.S. officials in Geneva were working to show a united front.
Trump’s Truth Social comments landed at a delicate moment: His administration is pressing Ukraine to accept a 28-point peace proposal by Thanksgiving, even as confusion over the plan’s authorship and concerns from European allies and U.S. lawmakers have raised questions about whose interests it serves.
Senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff, met with Ukrainian officials in Geneva this weekend to move peace talks forward with a goal of ending the war.
After a full day of talks, Rubio told reporters Sunday that “a tremendous amount of progress” had been made.
“So it is in my personal view that we’ve had probably the most productive and meaningful meeting so far in this entire process since we’ve been involved in from the beginning,” he said.
Another U.S. official told NBC News that Rubio, Witkoff and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll met with a Ukrainian delegation at the U.S. Mission in Geneva. The U.S. officials said the discussions were “positive and constructive.”
How a teen street musician became the face of the Kremlin’s crackdown
Known by her stage name, Naoko, 18-year-old Diana Loginova gained popularity performing songs by musicians who have spoken out against Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. Inevitably, in a country where nearly all forms of dissent have been crushed, Russian authorities quickly took notice.
Naoko was first detained last month for organizing a “mass simultaneous gathering of citizens” during a performance, which authorities said disrupted public order, and was sentenced to 13 days behind bars. She has since been rearrested twice.
“It looks like Russian authorities want to use the persecution of Naoko, as with many other public cases, to intimidate others,” Dmitrii Anisimov, a human rights activist and spokesperson for the OVD-Info protest monitoring group, told NBC News.
Meet the Press
New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said that he still believes Trump is a “fascist” and a “despot” but that he viewed their first face-to-face meeting at the White House as an “opportunity” to work together on lowering the cost of living for New Yorkers.
“Everything that I’ve said in the past I continue to believe,” he told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker about his negative comments.
He also spoke about his attitude going into the meeting and why it ended up so friendly.
“I thought again and again about what it would mean for New Yorkers if we could establish a productive relationship that would focus on the issues that those New Yorkers stay up late at night thinking about,” rather than keep trading barbs, Mamdani said.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was also on the show, and he said “no” when he was asked whether the United States was at risk of entering a recession in 2026 — and that he’s confident Americans will feel economic relief next year stemming from Trump’s tariff agenda and trade deals.
“I am very, very optimistic on 2026. We have set the table for a very strong, noninflationary growth economy,” Bessent told Welker.
He acknowledged that there is some pressure on the economy in certain sectors like housing, responding to comments from National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett this month that “we’re starting to see pockets of the economy that look like they might be in a recession.”
“Clearly, housing has been struggling, and interest rate-sensitive sectors have been in a recession,” Bessent said. He added that the recent government shutdown, which was the longest in history, also squeezed the economy.
Politics in brief
- Open to a return: President Donald Trump told NBC News he would like to see Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene resume her political career at some point, despite their recent falling-out.
- Climate collision: While the rest of the world was at a climate summit, the White House pushed sweeping proposals to roll back environmental protections and encourage oil drilling.
- Cancer diagnosis: Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy and Edwin Schlossberg and granddaughter of John F. Kennedy, said in a New Yorker essay that she has terminal cancer.
Elon Musk has left the White House, but he hasn’t left politics behind on X
Elon Musk can’t stop posting about the political fringe.
In recent weeks, Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, used X to post about immigrants to Britain, saying they will cause the country’s collapse. He posted about examples of violent crime in Minnesota and South Carolina — where he does not live — and about judges in California and New York who he believes are too lenient. Musk also smeared trans people, complained about Black-on-white crime, stoked fear about the end of civilization and shared his thoughts about the race of child actors.
Musk posted about all those topics and more in a recent one-month period, during which NBC News tracked and analyzed all of his posts for an in-depth look at where he focuses his attention online.
Verstappen wins Formula 1 race in Las Vegas as Norris and Piastri are disqualified
Max Verstappen won the Las Vegas Grand Prix after he captured the lead from championship leader Lando Norris at the start and never looked back.
But in a stunning twist, Norris and fellow McLaren driver Oscar Piastri were later disqualified in the middle of the night, hours after the race finish and podium celebrations, with officials finding illegal plank wear on their cars.
Norris crossed the line in second place, ahead of title rival Piastri, who finished in fourth. Their disqualification carries huge implications for the world championship fight with just two more Grand Prix races and one “sprint” left in the season.
More sports news:
- ‘Sunday Night Football’: Two of the NFC’s highest-scoring teams face off when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers visit the Los Angeles Rams. NBC News is covering all the action.
- ‘Rose’ bowl: Rose Lavelle scored in the 80th minute to propel Gotham FC over the Washington Spirit 1-0 to win its second National Women’s Soccer League championship.
- Rodney Rogers dies: The former Wake Forest star and 12-year NBA player was 54.
Notable quote
You don’t have infinite nerds.
James Kretchmar, chief technology officer at Akamai’s Cloud Technology Group, on recent internet outages
It’s not just you — internet outages severe enough to disrupt everyday services have become more frequent. While there’s plenty of finger-pointing to go around, a growing reliance on a handful of major internet infrastructure companies has led to major disruptions, sparking everything from political pressure to computer science memes.
In case you missed it
- Three separate weather systems threaten to cause travel delays across the country as 82 million people are projected to travel for Thanksgiving, according to AAA.
- Over two decades, Ryan Wedding went from a promising snowboarder competing in the Olympics to someone who officials have said is one of the most violent and ruthless criminals in the world, responsible for orchestrating murders and running a billion-dollar cocaine cartel.
- Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro told a judge he violated his ankle monitoring at his house arrest because of a nervous breakdown and hallucinations caused by a change in his medication.
- Israel, a day after it launched airstrikes against Hamas in the latest test of the Gaza ceasefire, said it targeted Hezbollah militant in its first attack in Beirut in months.
- Federal prosecutors said public comments by members of the Trump administration should not prevent the government from pursuing its case against Luigi Mangione.
- A pocket watch belonging to a couple who died together on the Titanic sold at auction for $2.3 million.
