Ukraine war
\nTrump administration proposes draft Ukraine peace ideas
\n MOSCOW\/WASHINGTON
\nUS President Donald Trump\u2019s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday for talks on a possible way to end the deadliest European conflict since World War Two.
\nTrump has repeatedly said he wants to end the war in Ukraine, which his administration casts as a \u201cbloodbath\u201d and \u201ca proxy war,\u201d but his efforts so far, including a summit with Putin in Alaska in August, have not yet brought peace. A leaked set of 28 US draft peace proposals emerged last week, spooking Ukrainian and European officials who felt it bowed to Moscow\u2019s key demands on NATO, Moscow\u2019s control of a fifth of Ukraine and restrictions on Ukraine\u2019s army. European powers then gave their counter-proposal for peace and at talks in Geneva, the US and Ukraine said they had created an \u201cupdated and refined peace framework\u201d to end the war. Putin has said the discussions so far are not about a draft agreement but about a set of proposals that he said last week \u201ccould be the basis for future agreements.\u201d Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Witkoff\u2019s meeting with Putin would be in the second half of Tuesday, but he refused to be drawn on Russia\u2019s red lines, saying that megaphone diplomacy was not helpful.
\nA White House official said Witkoff would be joined by Kushner for his trip to Russia. Putin has repeatedly said he is ready to talk peace but that if Ukraine refuses an agreement, then Russia\u2019s forces will advance further and take more Ukrainian territory.
\nRussian forces control more than 19 percent of Ukraine, or 115,600 square kilometers, up one percentage point from two years ago, and have advanced in 2025 at the fastest pace since 2022, according to pro-Ukrainian maps. Russian military commanders told Putin on Monday that Russian forces had captured the frontline Ukrainian towns of Pokrovsk and Vovchansk.
\nUS officials say more than 1.2 million men have been killed or injured in the war. Neither Ukraine nor Russia discloses their losses.
\nTrump, Europe, NATO and business with Russia
\nSince the US draft proposals emerged late last month, European powers have been scrambling to bolster Ukraine against what they see as a punitive pro-Russian peace that could open up Russia to US investment in oil, gas and rare earths and return Moscow to the G8.
\nKey Russian demands include a pledge that Ukraine would never join NATO, caps on the Ukrainian army, Russian control of the whole of Donbas, recognition of Russian control of Crimea, Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, and protection for Russian speakers and Russian Orthodox believers in Ukraine.
\nUkraine says those would amount to capitulation, and leave it prone to eventual conquest by Russia, though the United States has also floated a 10-year security guarantee for Kyiv. Witkoff, Kushner, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine\u2019s national security council, for talks on Sunday at Witkoff\u2019s Shell Bay club near Miami. \u201cWe share the view that the war must be brought to a fair end,\u201d President Volodymyr Zelensky said on X after talks in Paris.
\nPutin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022. The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine\u2019s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine\u2019s armed forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine war Trump administration proposes draft Ukraine peace ideas MOSCOW\/WASHINGTON US President Donald Trump\u2019s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday for talks on a possible way to end the deadliest European conflict since World War Two. Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517881,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n