President Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will visit Moscow next week as momentum builds for a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine agrees to core parts of peace plan, details to be discussed later
Ukraine has agreed to a core peace proposal, but details will be discussed at a possible future meeting in Washington.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Moscow next week to meet with Russian leaders, the United States and the Kremlin have confirmed, as momentum builds on a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.
The visit followed a Bloomberg report in which Mr. Witkov leaked details of an Oct. 14 phone call to senior Kremlin officials in which Russian President Vladmir Putin instructed him on how to propose a peace plan to President Trump.
President Trump dismissed criticism about his record while speaking to reporters on Air Force One on November 25 while traveling to the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, for the Thanksgiving holiday. The president called Witkoff’s conversation “a very standard negotiation format.”
“I’ve never heard of it, but it’s standard,” Trump said. “You know, he has to sell this to Ukraine, so he has to sell Ukraine to Russia. That’s the trader’s job.”
Jared Kusher may accompany Witkoff to Russia
Trump said Witkov would visit Russia next week, and Putin’s foreign policy chief of staff, Yuri Ushakov, later confirmed the visit. Trump also said his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who helped coordinate the Gaza peace deal and attended the Ukraine peace talks in Geneva last week, may also accompany Witkoff.
“As for Witkov, I can say that we have reached a preliminary agreement to come to Moscow next week,” Ushakov said.
Ushakov is the same Russian official whose conversations with Witkov are detailed in records released by Bloomberg.
During the phone conversation, Mr. Witkov advised Mr. Ushakov to ask Mr. Putin to congratulate Mr. Trump on the recently secured Israel-Gaza peace agreement and to propose a 20-point Russia-Ukraine peace agreement modeled on the Gaza deal.
“I agree that he would congratulate him and say that Mr. Trump is a true pacifist. He would say that,” Mr. Ushakov told Mr. Witkov, referring to his boss Mr. Putin.
Witkoff replied, “But here’s what I think is surprising.”
Witkoff added: “Maybe he’ll say to President Trump: Steve and Yuri have talked about a very similar 20-point plan for peace. That might be something we think might move the needle a little bit. We’re open to that kind of thing, to find out what it takes to get a peace deal done.”
In a Nov. 24 post on Truth Social, President Trump said that only a few points of disagreement remain after the release of the 28-point peace plan the United States created to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
“We’re having good talks,” Trump said later on Air Force One. “We started with Russia. We have some talks with Russia. Ukraine is progressing well. I think they are pretty happy with the situation. They want to see this thing over.”
President Trump says Russia-Ukraine talks are aimed at ‘sweeping the border’
President Trump said he hopes to secure an agreement before his next meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. A senior Ukrainian government official said the country and the United States had reached a “common understanding of the core terms” of the deal.
“Wait, it’s still too early to say that,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked by reporters if a peace deal was near, Russian news agency Interfax reported.
The latest move came after Ukrainian, U.S. and European officials met in Geneva on Nov. 23 to discuss a draft plan presented by the U.S. government to end the conflict that began in 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The current version of the plan has not been made public and must be accepted by Russia. U.S. officials familiar with the discussions declined to discuss the contents of the working draft, citing the sensitivity of the negotiations.
Kiev and its European allies had voiced alarm over an earlier proposal backed by President Trump that would have seen Ukraine cede territory to Russia and cap the size of its military.
“People are starting to realize that this is a good deal for both sides,” Trump said. “They have to stop the war. They are losing a lot of people.”
Asked if a Ukrainian land transfer was still on the table, Trump suggested that both countries would give up land.
“Well, they’re talking about landings in both directions, trying to clear the border,” the president said. “You can’t go through the middle of a house, you can’t go through the middle of a highway. So they’re trying to do something.”
Contributors: Francesca Chambers and Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, USA TODAY. Reuters
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