Ukraine-Russia conflict newest: Trump says Russia ‘making concessions’ as he dispatches envoy to fulfill Putin

US president Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and a host of other key US officials would come to Moscow next week for talks on a possible peace plan for Ukraine, the Kremlin said.

“As for Witkoff, I can say that a preliminary agreement has been reached that he will come to Moscow next week,” Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy aide, told Russian state television’s top Kremlin reporter, Pavel Zarubin.

Ushakov said that in addition to Witkoff “a number of other administration representatives who are involved in Ukrainian affairs” would also come to Moscow.

The Kremlin said the leak of a telephone conversation between senior Kremlin and US officials was an attempt to hinder the talks on a possible peace deal for Ukraine.

Bloomberg News reported that president Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, in a telephone call with Yuri Ushakov, Russian president Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy aide, said they should work together on a ceasefire plan for Ukraine and that Putin should raise it with Trump.

Bloomberg said it had reviewed a recording of the conversation and published a transcript of the call.

When asked why the call was leaked, Ushakov told Russian state television’s top Kremlin reporter, Pavel Zarubin: “To hinder, probably. It is unlikely this was done to improve relations.”

“As for Witkoff, I can say that a preliminary agreement has been reached that he will come to Moscow next week,” he said.

Steve Witkoff and Yuri Ushakov’s now leaked call happened on 14 October, a day after Trump made a triumphant visit to Israel and Egypt to celebrate sealing the Gaza ceasefire.

In the call, Witkoff advised the senior aide to Vladimir Putin on how the Russian leader should go about pitching the US president on a peace plan aimed at bringing an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“Here’s what I think would be amazing,” Witkoff said to his counterpart during the call.

“Maybe he says to President Trump: you know, Steve and Yuri discussed a very similar 20-point plan to peace and that could be something that we think might move the needle a little bit, we’re open to those sorts of things.”

Witkoff also suggested setting up a Trump-Putin call before Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s White House visit later that week and suggested that Putin congratulate Trump on the Gaza agreement as an entry point into the call.

Ushakov agreed that Putin “will congratulate” and will say “Mr Trump is a real peace man.”

US negotiator Steve Witkoff coached the Russians on how to approach Trump on the topic of Ukraine, a new report of their call transcripts shows.

Witkoff had offered advice to high-ranking Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov regarding how Vladimir Putin should speak to Donald Trump in a call lasting five minutes, reported Bloomberg.

According to call transcripts obtained by them, Ushakov and Witkoff alluded to a possible “20-point plan” as early as October 14. The scope of that plan apparently widened during subsequent conversations with Dmitriev, it added.

Witkoff, according to a transcript of the 14 October call published by the news service, advised Ushakov that Putin should call Trump to congratulate him for the Gaza peace deal, say Russia had supported it and that he respects the president as a man of peace.

“From that, it’s going to be a really good call,” Witkoff said according to the transcript.

The Bloomberg report came hours after Trump said a proposal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine has been “fine-tuned” and announced he’s sending Witkoff to meet with Putin.

The White House did not dispute the veracity of the transcript, and Trump described Witkoff’s reported approach to the Russians in the call as “standard” negotiating procedure.

Russia’s foreign ministry has accused European politicians and European media of trying to undermine US efforts to clinch a peace settlement for Ukraine.

European media and politicians are trying “to disrupt the possibility of political and diplomatic settlement” of the conflict in Ukraine, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the foreign ministry, told Radio Sputnik.

Zakharova said “information attacks” were being unleashed repeatedly by European politicians and European media.

She did not acknowledge the Kremlin’s remarks of rejecting the same peace process on Monday.

The Kremlin on Monday said that a European counter-proposal to a US 28-point peace plan for Ukraine was not constructive and that it simply did not work for Moscow.

“The European plan, at first glance… is completely unconstructive and does not work for us,” Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow.

The publication of the 28-point draft US peace plan last week had deepened concerns in Ukraine and among European powers that Russia’s core demands on Nato, territory and the chronology of any peace deal had been accepted by Washington.

In a matter of days, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll vaulted from being the leader of a military bureaucracy — where he’s been cutting red tape to quickly buy inexpensive drones — to a key negotiator in the Trump administration’s push to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

The boyish Iraq War veteran, former venture capitalist and friend of vice president JD Vance went from presenting president Donald Trump’s plan to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv to sitting down with Russian officials in the United Arab Emirates on Monday and Tuesday, heading up the latest phase of talks on a possible deal to halt the fighting.

Driscoll only learned of his new role as a negotiator about a week before he was sitting across the table from Zelensky, a US official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive plans, said Driscoll always had planned to visit Ukraine but the trip was aimed at learning more about how its military has been using drones in warfare, not to negotiate peace.

Trump appears to believe Driscoll’s efforts are going well, posting on social media that “my team has made tremendous progress.”

“In the hopes of finalising this Peace Plan,” Trump wrote Tuesday, “I have directed my Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with President Putin in Moscow and, at the same time, Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll will be meeting with the Ukrainians.”

It’s an unlikely assignment for the Army’s top civilian leader, who got the job in February at age 38.

His Senate confirmation hearing focused on how the Army could modernise its systems, improve recruiting and beef up the military industrial base, not international diplomacy.

Will it all be over by Christmas? Volodymyr Zelensky has asked to see Donald Trump in the coming days for final consultations on a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth winter. Trump himself has posted on social media that “something good just may be happening”.

The Americans seem to be in a hurry to get a peace deal signed off, while the Russians have at least shown some interest in ending the fighting, albeit very much on Moscow’s terms. But, of course, there have been many false dawns in the course of a conflict that has in fact lasted, on and off, since the first Russian invasion in 2014.

Russian authorities must consolidate the Russian language and identity in parts of Ukraine incorporated into the country since Moscow’s 2022 invasion, according to a document signed by president Vladimir Putin and published yesterday.

The document, entitled “Strategy of Russia’s national policy in the period to 2036”, appeared as a decree signed by the president. It calls for measures to ensure that 95 percent of the country’s population identify as Russian by 2036.

Long links between Russia and Ukraine, from even before the Soviet era, mean that some Ukrainians have traditionally been sympathetic to Russia and most speak both languages. But since the invasion, any such sympathy has vanished and surveys show that the use of Russian has undergone a marked decline.

The document, to come into force in January, said securing control over eastern regions “created conditions for restoring the unity of the historical territories of the Russian state”.

It was vital, the document said, “to adopt additional measures to strengthen overall Russian civic identity”, entrench use of Russian and act against “efforts by unfriendly foreign states to destabilise inter-ethnic and inter-confessional relations and create a split in society”.

The Coalition of the Willing called for “rock-solid” guarantees that cannot be violated by Russia in the future as Ukraine and its allies held a virtual summit yesterday.

“The absolute condition for a good peace is a set of very robust security guarantees and not paper guarantees. Ukraine has had its share of promises that were shattered by successive Russian aggressions, and real rock-solid guarantees are a necessity,” French president Emmanuel Macron said at the virtual meeting.

Macron said France and other European nations will be working towards using frozen Russian assets to provide financial assistance to Ukraine.

In a separate interview, Macron said soldiers from France, the UK, or Turkey could be sent to Ukraine as part of the “reassurance force” on the day a peace deal is signed.

A peacekeeper deployment in Ukraine would not be carried out by Nato, but as part of an “intergovernmental coalition,” he said, even as Russia has demanded no deployment of foreign troops.