The US president said his original 28-point peace plan has now been adjusted based on what both Russia and Ukraine want.
Kyiv: Donald Trump has sent his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin and finalise the details of a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Trump said both sides have made “tremendous progress” and that only a “few remaining points of disagreement” are left after several rounds of talks.
Ukraine wanted a direct meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Trump this week, but Trump made it clear he will only meet Zelenskyy and Putin when the peace deal is final or nearly finished. On Truth Social, Trump wrote that Witkoff had been “directed” to meet Putin in Moscow, while US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll would hold talks with Ukrainian officials at the same time. Speaking from the White House this week, Trump said, “I think we’re getting very close to the deal, we’ll find out.”
Zelensky told the Coalition of the Willing on November 25 that Ukraine is ready to move ahead with the US peace “framework.” His team also suggested that he could travel to the US this week to finalize the agreement.
French President Emmanuel Macron, however, warned that Russia still does not seem interested in a ceasefire. According to him, there is “clearly no Russian willingness” to stop the fighting or engage seriously with the more Ukraine-friendly proposal.
The latest negotiations between the US, Russia and Ukraine have been happening in Abu Dhabi, after an earlier round of discussions in Geneva over the weekend. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said there were “a few delicate, but not insurmountable, details” left to resolve.
Europe 'failed to act' in resolving Ukraine conflict: LavrovRussian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asserted this week that European countries have missed their opportunities to play a meaningful role in resolving the Ukrainian conflict. "Each time when progress was achieved and agreements reached - either interim or more stable, long-term - these agreements were broken," the Russian state-run news agency TASS quoted Lavrov as saying. Lavrov further said, "So Europe, when they say now: 'Don't you dare do anything without us,' you already had opportunities, you didn't use them, you simply failed to act." He also stated that Russia does not consider France and Germany as possible mediators in settling the conflict. |
