War talks/ Putin and Witkoff meet in Moscow today

2025-12-02 07:31:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow today, after the White House said it was optimistic about reaching an agreement to end the war in Ukraine.

US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has acted as a foreign adviser in the diplomatic talks, is also expected to attend.

The summit comes after two days of negotiations in Florida between Ukrainian and American officials, including Witkoff and Kushner, aimed at refining a US-backed peace plan that had been seen as favorable to Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the talks as constructive but said there were some difficult issues that still needed to be resolved. Speaking after a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday, Zelensky said Kiev's priorities in the peace talks were preserving Ukraine's sovereignty and providing strong security guarantees.

The Ukrainian president said the territorial issue is the most difficult element of the peace deal, with the Kremlin continuing to push Ukraine to give up territory in the east it still controls, something Kiev has long maintained it will never do.

Witkoff also held talks with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Zelensky and Ukraine's new chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, while several key European leaders joined the Zelensky-Macron meeting virtually.

Last week, Putin said he had seen a draft peace plan proposed by the US and that it could become the basis for a future agreement to end the war.

However, Kremlin officials later cast doubt on whether it would accept the proposal, after Kiev and its European allies said they had secured changes to it. The initial draft of the US-Russia peace plan that circulated in November caused concern in Kiev and across Europe.

Kiev and its European partners have insisted that Ukraine be given security guarantees, such as NATO membership, that would protect it from repeated attacks.

But Russia strongly opposes this and Trump has also ruled out the possibility of Ukraine joining the military alliance. The talks in Moscow on Tuesday come as Russian officials claim to have captured the key strategic towns of Pokrovsk - known in Russian as Krasnoarmeysk - and Vovshansk in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials have denied that either city has fallen to Russia. According to open-source intelligence projects that continuously monitor the war front lines, neither Vovshansk nor Pokrovsk has yet been fully captured by the Russian military. /CNA