Ukraine-Russia warfare newest: Four killed in Russian assault on Kharkiv as Europe calls for adjustments to Trump’s peace plan

The 28-point peace plan drafted by the Trump administraion for Ukraine and Russia will be a ‘historically bad deal’ and a list of Russian “talking points”.

The top Democrat on the US Senate Intelligence Committee, senator Mark Warner, told ABC’s “This Week” that the peace plan appeared to be “almost a series of Russian talking points,” had made Europeans “feel like they’ve been totally left high and dry” and had led to “ferocious pushback.”

The senator said the plan “would go down, frankly, as a historically bad deal, rivaling Neville Chamberlain giving in to Hitler before World War II.”

Warner also said that he fears the plan could embolden Chinese leader Xi Jinping to pursue an invasion of Taiwan if accepted, blasting the proposal as “a total capitulation by Ukraine.”

“Clearly this plan was at least initially laid out as simply Russian input and no Ukrainian input,” Warner said.

“Now they’re saying there has been Ukrainian input. Now the president is changing his mind again about whether this is a final offer or not. At the end of the day, we all want to see peace, but we don’t want to see a peace that rewards Vladimir Putin,” he said.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio said high-stakes talks in Geneva were “very worthwhile” and constituted the most productive day in “a very long time”.

“I feel very optimistic that we can get something done,” Rubio said.

“This is a very delicate moment,” Rubio said of what still needed to be worked out.

“Some of it is semantics, or language. Others require higher-level decisions and consultations. Others, I think, just need more time to work through,” he said.

But he offered very little information on what was discussed. He also downplayed a Thursday deadline set by president Donald Trump for Ukraine to respond to the plan, saying simply that officials want to see fighting stop as soon as possible and that officials could keep negotiating Monday and beyond.

He said that higher-level officials may eventually have to get involved.

As Volodymyr Zelensky faces a difficult choice, US officials and lawmakers have expressed their concern about Russian involvement in the plan after it was revealed the administration had held meetings with a blacklisted Kremlin official beforehand.

Kirill Dmitriev, a close ally of Putin, is the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and assumed the office of the special presidential envoy on Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation on 23 February this year despite little diplomatic experience.

Dmitriev and his fund have been under US sanctions, which effectively bar American citizens and companies from dealing with them, since 2022.

But that did not stop Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner from meeting with Dmitriev in Miami at the end of October, it has emerged. Witkoff has met with Dmitriev several times this year and the Trump administration has issued a special waiver to allow his entry, a US official told Reuters.

German chancellor Friedrich Merz said that he had spoken to Donald Trump and made clear there were some parts of the plans key European nations could agree on but others where they could not.

“I told him that we are fully in line with Ukraine, that the sovereignty of this country must not be jeopardised,” Merz said in an interview with DW.

Alice Rufo, France’s minister delegate at the defence ministry, told broadcaster France Info before the talks began that key points of discussion would include the plan’s restrictions on the Ukrainian army, which she described as “a limitation on its sovereignty”.

“Ukraine must be able to defend itself,” she said. “Russia wants war and waged war many times in fact over the past years,” she said.

Polish prime minister Donald Tusk yesterday said that Warsaw was ready to work on the plan with the leaders of Europe, Canada and Japan, but also said that it “would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created.”

Russian forces staged a “massive” drone attack yesterday on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, killing four people and injuring several others, officials said.

“There is a massive attack on Kharkiv,” mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

Terekhov said four people had been killed, including one person whose body was recovered from under rubble. Regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said 12 people were injured, including two children aged 11 and 12.

At least 15 strikes were recorded in six areas of the city in northeastern Ukraine.

Kharkiv, located 30km (18 miles) from the Russian border, withstood Russian attempts to capture it early in the war and has since been a frequent target of attacks.

The governor of Dnipropetrovsk region farther south said two people were killed in a Russian strike on the town of Marhanets.

Russia’s defence ministry said its air defence systems had intercepted and destroyed 93 Ukrainian drones overnight.

The drones were downed over four regions, including 45 over the border Belgorod region, and over the Black sea and the Azov sea.

The prime minister has been criticised in some quarters for being overseas again. Sir Keir Starmer is in South Africa for a G20 summit meeting. This means he is, briefly, not in the United Kingdom. But in doing so, he has the chance to meet world leaders face to face and tackle urgent problems in which the UK has a direct national interest.

Sir Keir has spoken to Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, and Friedrich Merz, chancellor of Germany, in Johannesburg, with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, taking part by phone.

Here is Trump’s proposal, verbatim:

1. Ukraine’s sovereignty will be confirmed.

2. A comprehensive non-aggression agreement will be concluded between Russia, Ukraine and Europe. All ambiguities of the last 30 years will be considered settled.

3. It is expected that Russia will not invade neighbouring countries and Nato will not expand further.

4. A dialogue will be held between Russia and Nato, mediated by the United States, to resolve all security issues and create conditions for de-escalation in order to ensure global security and increase opportunities for cooperation and future economic development.

5. Ukraine will receive reliable security guarantees.

6. The size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be limited to 600,000 personnel.

7. Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join Nato, and Nato agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.

8. Nato agrees not to station troops in Ukraine.

9. European fighter jets will be stationed in Poland.

Read the other 19 conditions of Trump’s peace plan here:

Zia Yusuf, the party’s former chair and key member of Reform’s leadership, claimed that it was “unreasonable” to link Gill’s crime with the softer stance that the party and Mr Farage have taken on Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its criticism of the Ukraine war.

Mr Yusuf described Gill as “treasonous, horrific, awful” in an interview with Sir Trevor Phillips on his Sunday morning political show on Sky News.