MOSCOW (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow next week with other senior U.S. officials for talks with Russian leaders about a possible peace plan for Ukraine, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
Trump is leading efforts to secure an agreement to end a war that has raged for nearly four years since Russian President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
Details of a U.S.-backed peace plan that emerged last week alarmed Ukrainian and European officials who feared it heavily favoured Moscow by bowing to key Russian demands – barring Ukraine’s NATO entry, enshrining Moscow’s control of a fifth of Ukraine and limiting the size of Ukraine’s army.
But, after U.S. and Ukrainian officials sought to narrow gaps over the plan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Kyiv was ready to advance a U.S.-backed framework for ending the war and discuss disputed points with Trump in talks that he said should include European allies.
‘PRELIMINARY AGREEMENT’ FOR WITKOFF TO VISIT
Trump said on Air Force One that Witkoff would meet Putin and that Jared Kushner, who helped negotiate the deal that brought about an uneasy ceasefire in the Gaza war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, was also involved.
“As for Witkoff, I can say that a preliminary agreement has been reached that he will come to Moscow next week,” said Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy aide.
Asked by reporters whether a peace deal was close, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by Russian news agency Interfax as saying: “Wait, it’s premature to say that yet.”
Trump said U.S. negotiators were making progress in discussions with Russia and Ukraine, and Moscow had agreed to some concessions, though he said the war was “just moving in one direction” so Russia could take more land in coming months.
Russian forces control more than 19% of Ukraine and have advanced in 2025 at the fastest pace since 2022, according to pro-Ukrainian maps, although the advances remain slow and Kyiv says Russia has incurred heavy losses to achieve them.
Ukraine and its European allies echo former U.S. President Joe Biden in saying the invasion is an imperial-style land grab for which Moscow must not be rewarded.
Putin casts the war as a watershed moment in relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 by enlarging NATO and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.
He caught the West off guard by launching the invasion of Ukraine after dismissing suggestions that he would do so.
U.S. officials say more than 1.2 million Russians and Ukrainians have been killed or wounded in the war, which has laid waste to swaths of Ukrainian territory and devastated cities and towns across the country.
WITKOFF AND RUSSIA
Trump said last week Zelenskiy could either agree to the U.S. plan or “fight his little heart out”, but has since backed away from a hard deadline.
Bloomberg News reported that Witkoff said in an October 14 telephone call with Ushakov that they should work together on a ceasefire plan for Ukraine and that Putin should raise it with Trump.
Bloomberg said Witkoff’s guidance included suggestions on setting up a Trump-Putin call before Zelenskiy visited the White House later that week, and using the recently concluded Gaza agreement as a way in.
Bloomberg said it had reviewed a recording of the conversation and published a transcript of the call. It was not clear how Bloomberg got the recording of the conversation.
When asked why the call was leaked, the Kremlin’s Ushakov said: “To hinder, probably. It is unlikely this was done to improve relations.” He added that he would speak to Witkoff about the leak of the call.
He said that the Ukraine peace plan was not discussed at meetings Russian officials had with U.S. officials in Abu Dhabi this week.
(Reporting by Reuters, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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