Putin to meet Trump envoy hours after Russia’s weekend bombardment | World | News
Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff is travelling to Moscow today, where he will engage in crucial crunch talks with Vladimir Putin – days after Russia launched its biggest assault on Ukraine in a month. Witkoff will present a peace plan proposal to Putin in what is expected to be a crucial test for the Trump administration’s efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
On Monday, the Kremlin said a meeting between Witkoff and Putin was scheduled for Tuesday. “The president will hold several closed-door meetings today in preparation for the Russian-American contacts,” spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow. Witkoff is expected in the Russian capital to discuss changes that Kyiv and its allies have secured to the US peace plan. Donald Trump‘s 28-point peace plan became public last month, sparking alarm that it was too favorable to Moscow.
The original document demanded Kyiv cede the entire Donbas region, slash its armed forces, accept permanent neutrality, and grant sweeping autonomy to Russian-speaking areas.
Critics branded it a Russian wish-list drafted in Washington. It was revised following talks in Geneva between the US and Ukraine over recent days.
There is little expectation that Putin will agree to a deal. The Russian leader has already signalled that he will not compromise and has made hardline remarks, repeating his demands that Ukraine withdraw from territory he claims, and stating that it is “pointless” to negotiate with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
He suggested the Kremlin believes it is making sufficient progress on the battlefield and is content to wait until Kyiv concedes to its conditions.
Zelensky has travelled to Paris today to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron, with whom he’s expected to discuss the negotiations with the US. Zelensky and Europe appear to be signaling solidarity on a day when the US and Putin are expected to dominate the airwaves.
“It will be a very substantive day,” Zelenskyy said on Monday morning. “Diplomacy, defense, energy – the priorities are clear.”
Over the weekend, Russia struck Ukrainian homes and power plants. Just before 11pm on Friday, the sirens rang out across Kyiv and in many other cities, with intelligence citing multiple Russian bombers in the air along with hundreds of drones.
Two people were killed in Ukraine’s capital city, and another in the broader Kyiv region, the regional police said. A further 29 people were wounded in the city, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.
