Unusual diplomacy to end Russia-Ukraine war

And so, Margaret, from your point of view, what has either shifted or changed in the past week? We went from US sources kind of saying that, hey, Zelenskyy could come to the US, maybe there's an agreement by Thanksgiving, to actually not so much. Well, look, this is head-snapping diplomacy. I've really, truly never seen anything like this. You had Zelenskyy himself saying just yesterday, I'm ready to go talk to President Trump. I'm ready to travel. Plans were being made here in Washington and in Mar-a-Lago for any kind of interaction if they were set to go. And then President Trump posted on social media, not ready to meet with Zelenskyy yet. So that Thanksgiving deadline has disappeared. And we know that there is just an invitation to keep moving these trains along on these parallel tracks. But I can't emphasize enough here how unusual it is to have the diplomats uninvolved with diplomacy. That's not who's negotiating. You have on the US side, the Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, very close to Vice President Vance, talking to the Ukrainians about security guarantees. He's not a diplomat. You have Steve Witkoff, who just recently started in diplomacy after being a longtime Trump friend and work in real estate, and Jared Kushner, who doesn't even work for the United States government right now, are working on the Russian end of things. So this is really unusual. So if you're confused by the back and forth, imagine what the professionals are who've trained to be doing this because they are just very much trying to understand what is happening inside the Trump inner circle with these efforts. A lot of this exploded in the press last week in a way that surprised professional diplomats, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio seems involved in a limited way. He flew in over the weekend to Geneva and then flew out. And typically, it would be the National Security Advisor and Secretary of State who would be marshaling all the forces to pull in the same direction. And right now, it seems like that's not yet happening. You are seeing European officials close ranks around President Zelenskyy to try to help him press back and get the United States to provide more guarantees. Securitywise, you heard President Zelenskyy say overnight, he wants things like access to frozen Russian funds in European bank accounts, and he wants the return of those kidnapped Ukrainian children as well.

Yeah, underscoring just how difficult this is, even with professionals, even when President Trump is using those he trusts to get a deal done, it's easier said than done. Margaret Brennan, always great to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us this morning. Thank you.