US president Donald Trump said he would send special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss developing proposals to end the Ukraine war, but despite White House optimism there was little sign of progress on core sticking points.
Mr Trump said negotiations had left “only a few remaining points of disagreement” but there was no breakthrough on the issues of territorial control and security guarantees and he dampened expectations of immediate peace summits.
“I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskiy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after a day of negotiations involving US, Russian and Ukrainian officials in Abu Dhabi.
[ Leaked audio reveals US envoy coached Putin aide on talking to TrumpOpens in new window ]
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he would be willing to meet Mr Trump as soon as possible to discuss the final details of an agreement. Ukrainian officials said they were close to accepting the framework of a deal, but that some details could only be discussed at presidential level.
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In his nightly address, Mr Zelenskiy said Ukrainian officials had been working “on the text of the document” prepared in a previous round of talks in Geneva and said that “the principles in this document can be developed into deeper agreements”.
“Our delegations reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva,” the secretary of Ukraine’s security council, Rustem Umerov, wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
[ A city waits for a peace deal, or for Russian troopsOpens in new window ]
But there was no suggestion that the revised US-Ukraine agreement discussed in Geneva on Sunday would be something to which Russia would agree.
Earlier on Tuesday, Russia warned that it will not accept significant changes to the controversial US-proposed plan to end the war, after the White House claimed that only “a few delicate, but not insurmountable, details” stood in the way of a peace deal.
US and Russian officials met in Abu Dhabi and Mr Zelenskiy spoke to European leaders before they held a video conference involving states that back Kyiv in a so-called coalition of the willing.
According to Reuters, Mr Zelenskiy said Ukraine was ready to advance the US-backed framework and discuss disputed points with Mr Trump.
“Over the past week, the United States has made tremendous progress towards a peace deal,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. “There are a few delicate, but not insurmountable, details that must be sorted out and will require further talks between Ukraine, Russia and the United States.”
Moscow wants to move forward with a 28-point peace plan tabled by the US last week, which Ukraine and several European states regard as little more than a Kremlin wish list.
After talks in Geneva on Sunday, US, Ukrainian and European officials said they had made significant progress on a revised peace framework that reportedly removes or amends some of Moscow’s main demands or sets them aside for future discussion – including the status of occupied territory, the future size of Ukraine’s military, justice for war crimes, and several points on relations between Russia and Nato.
“Our assessments remain valid in the sense that the key provisions of Trump’s [original] plan are based on understandings reached in Anchorage at the Russian-American summit in August this year. And these principles are generally reflected in the plan, which we welcomed,” Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday.
“If the spirit and letter of Anchorage is erased in terms of the key understandings that we established then, of course, it will be a fundamentally different situation.”
Mr Trump and Mr Putin have not revealed what they discussed or agreed upon at the controversial summit in Alaska.
However, it quickly became clear after the meeting that Mr Trump had dropped his demand for an immediate ceasefire and now accepted Moscow’s call to let fighting continue until a comprehensive deal was reached on all political and security issues between Russia and Ukraine – an approach that put huge pressure on Kyiv amid battlefield setbacks and fears that the US might halt military aid.
Urgent European diplomatic efforts then helped to ensure that Ukraine was not railroaded into de facto capitulation, prompting Russia to accuse European states – led by Germany, France and Britain – of sabotaging a supposed Trump-Putin peace effort.
“Europe, when they say now – ‘don’t you dare do anything without us’ – you already had chances, guys, but you didn’t take them,” Mr Lavrov said.
US army secretary Dan Driscoll held previously unannounced talks with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi on Monday and Tuesday. Neither the substance of the talks nor the members of the Russian delegation were revealed.
“It’s an initiative that goes in the right direction: towards peace. However, there are aspects of that plan that deserve to be discussed, negotiated, improved ... We want peace, but we don’t want peace that is effectively a capitulation,” French president Emmanuel Macron said of the US peace plan.
“What was put on the table gives us an idea of what would be acceptable to the Russians. Does that mean that it is what must be accepted by the Ukrainians and the Europeans? The answer is no.”
France and Britain reaffirmed on Tuesday that they might send troops to Ukraine in some capacity if a peace deal was agreed and implemented.
Russia launched a wave of overnight attacks on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, with at least seven people killed in strikes that hit city buildings and energy infrastructure.
Russia fired 22 missiles of various types and more than 460 drones, Mr Zelenskiy wrote on Telegram.
The strikes knocked out water, electricity and heat in parts of the city. Images showed a large fire spreading in a nine-storey residential building in Kyiv’s eastern Dniprovskyi district.
Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said 20 people were wounded in Kyiv. The Russian defence ministry said that it targeted military-industrial facilities and energy assets. The strikes were a response to Ukrainian attacks on civilian objects in Russia, the ministry said.
A Ukrainian attack on southern Russia killed three people and damaged homes, authorities said. – Additional reporting: AP/Guardian
