laura gojiand
Ottilie Mitchell
U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign envoy Steve Witkoff is scheduled to hold a meeting at the Kremlin next week. This is because the United States continues to push for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
The visit, confirmed Wednesday by President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, comes after Ukraine said it had reached a “common understanding” with the White House on the outlines of a potential peace deal.
On Tuesday, President Trump said U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll had assigned Witkoff to meet with the Russian president during his deployment to Ukraine.
This comes after last week’s release of a 28-point draft plan that the US president said had been “fine-tuned to reflect additional input from both sides.”
Speaking to reporters before the Kremlin confirmed the visit, Trump said his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who served as a White House aide in previous diplomatic talks, may also attend the Kremlin meeting.
He said the agreement would include “two-way” land concessions and a “border clean-up.”
The president, who has made reaching a negotiated settlement to end the conflict a key foreign policy goal, said he did not give either side a date for agreeing to negotiations, saying “for me, the deadline is after the negotiations are over.”
The Kremlin previously said Russia had not yet been consulted on a new draft agreement and warned last week that it might not accept amendments to the plan.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Moscow favored the initial American system, but if there had been significant changes the situation would have been “fundamentally different.”
As of Tuesday morning, the Kremlin had not received a copy of the new plan, Lavrov said. Europe accuses America of undermining peace efforts.
U.S. officials have not publicly addressed Russian concerns, but Driscoll and Russian representatives met in Abu Dhabi on Monday and Tuesday.
Some issues over which Russia and Ukraine remain deeply in conflict, including security guarantees for Kiev and control of several regions of eastern Ukraine where fighting is taking place, have reportedly not been resolved so far.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday he was ready to meet with Trump to discuss “sensitive issues” and his administration is targeting a meeting before the end of the month.
“I look forward to more active cooperation with the American side and President (Donald) Trump. A lot depends on the United States, as Russia pays the greatest attention to American strength,” he said.
A day earlier, Prime Minister Zelenskyy said the 28-point plan had been scaled back by removing some provisions.
“I look forward to meeting with President Zelensky and President Putin soon,” Trump wrote on social media, “only when an agreement to end the war is or is in its final stages.”
Despite the White House’s relative optimism, European leaders appeared doubtful that peace could be at hand after nearly four years of war. French President Emmanuel Macron said, “There is no will in Russia for a ceasefire,” and Downing Street warned that “there is a long and difficult road ahead.”
On Tuesday, Macron and British Prime Minister Kyr Starmer chaired a meeting of the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’, a loose group of Ukraine’s allies in Europe and beyond. They pledged continued defense support, including interim talks on a potential peacekeeping force in the event of a ceasefire.
In a call also attended by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the leaders agreed to form a task force with the US to “accelerate” work. About the security guarantees that can be provided to Ukraine.
The issue of security guarantees is just one of the areas where Moscow and Kiev are at odds. Prime Minister Zelensky said Monday that the biggest problem standing in the way of peace is Putin’s demand for legal recognition of territories occupied by Russia.
Moscow has consistently called for Ukraine’s complete withdrawal from the entire eastern Donbass, which consists of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Russian forces also control large parts of the Crimea Peninsula, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, which Russia annexed in 2014.
After weeks of seemingly stagnant diplomacy, there has been a flurry of activity following leaks of the US-backed plan.
The original draft included Ukraine agreeing to cede areas it continues to control, pledging not to join NATO and drastically reducing the size of its military, elements that appeared to reflect the Kremlin’s core demands.
Putin said the original draft could be the “basis” for a deal, but Zelenskyy responded that Ukraine faced a choice between retaining the United States as a partner and “dignity.” European leaders reacted against a number of factors.
On the eve of a meeting on the plan between U.S., European and Ukrainian officials in Geneva on Sunday, Rubio was forced to publicly assert that the plan was “drafted by the United States” after a group of senators claimed he had said it was in fact a Russian draft and not the White House’s position.
Since then, the United States and Ukraine have welcomed progress on the draft, which Zelensky said represented the “right approach” after securing the changes.
Trump originally urged Ukraine to quickly adopt the plan, but he told reporters Tuesday that the original version was “just a map,” adding, “It was a concept, not a plan.”
Also on Tuesday, Bloomberg released transcripts of an October 14 call between Steve Witkoff, Trump’s diplomatic envoy, and Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser.
When Witkov was asked about the transcript in which he discussed how the Kremlin should approach Trump and said Ukraine should give up land to reach a peace deal, Trump told reporters that this was “a very standard form of negotiation.” BBC News has not independently verified the reported leaked phone calls.
Meanwhile, the fight continues. Russia and Ukraine both said the strike took place in Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday night.
Ukrainian regional head Ivan Federov said at least seven people were injured, while Kremlin governor Yevgeny Balitsky reported that the energy grid in Kiev-controlled areas had been hit, leaving up to 40,000 people without electricity.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, tens of thousands of soldiers and thousands of civilians have been killed or injured, and millions of people have fled their homes.
