US President Donald Trump said his plan to end the war in Ukraine has been \u201cfine-tuned\u201d, adding that he was sending his Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to hold meetings with Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin, and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to meet with Ukrainian officials.<\/p>\n
Trump suggested he could eventually meet with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself, but not until further progress has been made in negotiations.<\/p>\n
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday, Trump said resolving the war was difficult, and described what had been a 28-point plan as a work in progress. \u201cThat was not a plan \u2014 it was a concept,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s plan for ending the nearly four-year war emerged last week. It heavily favoured Russia, prompting Zelenskyy to quickly engage with US negotiators.<\/p>\n
European leaders, fearing for their own future facing Russian aggression but apparently sidelined by Trump in drawing up the proposal, scrambled to steer the negotiations towards addressing their concerns.<\/p>\n
Trump said he believed Witkoff would be meeting with Putin in Moscow next week, noting that his son-in law Jared Kushner, could potentially be joining the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are starting to realise it\u2019s a good deal for both parties,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
The US president also played down the element of his plan that would require Ukraine to cede territory to Russia. The plan, in its original form, called on Kyiv to cede the entirety of the eastern Donbas region, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk, which Ukraine still controls large swaths of.<\/p>\n
Trump suggested that Russian forces were already likely to seize the land they’re seeking.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way it\u2019s going, if you look, it\u2019s just moving in one direction,” Trump stated. “So eventually that\u2019s land that over the next couple of months might be gotten by Russia anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments came after Driscoll held talks late on Monday and throughout Tuesday with Russian officials in the United Arab Emirates\u2019 capital, Abu Dhabi, to discuss the emerging proposal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe talks are going well and we remain optimistic,\u201d said Jeff Tolbert, spokesman for the Army secretary, in a statement.<\/p>\n
Witkoff, a real estate developer turned diplomat, has been Trump\u2019s chief negotiator with Putin, while Driscoll, who is close to Vice President JD Vance, has stepped up his involvement in the administration\u2019s peace push in recent days.<\/p>\n
French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that peace efforts are gathering momentum and \u201care clearly at a crucial juncture.\u201d<\/p>\n
He spoke after senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials met in Geneva on Sunday and a virtual \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d meeting of Ukraine\u2019s European allies took place on Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio took part in both gatherings.<\/p>\n
\u201cNegotiations are getting a new impetus. And we should seize this momentum,\u201d he said during the video conference meeting of countries, led by France and the UK, that could help police any ceasefire with Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think we are moving in a positive direction and indications today that in large part the majority of the text, (Zelenskyy) is indicating, can be accepted,\u201d said UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy said late on Monday that \u201cthe list of necessary steps to end the war can become workable.” He said he planned to discuss \u201csensitive\u201d outstanding issues with Trump.<\/p>\n
Rustem Umerov, a senior adviser to Zelenskyy, in a post on X detailed that the Ukrainian president hopes to finalise a deal with Trump \u201cat the earliest suitable date in November.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additional sources \u2022 AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump said his plan to end the war in Ukraine has been \u201cfine-tuned\u201d, adding that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153383,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,42,43,92295,40,38,41,39,1032,2637,6677,13580],"class_list":["post-153382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-russias-invasion-of-ukraine","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","tag-war-in-ukraine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}