US envoy Steve Witkoff is travelling to Moscow to meet president Vladimir Putin, who claimed a key Ukrainian city had fallen to Russia on the eve of the talks about a potential peace plan to end his war.
Mr Putin said Russian troops had taken the city of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region in a video announcement posted late Monday by the Kremlin.
Ukraine has not commented so far on the claim, which would represent Russia’s most significant battlefield advance in nearly two years.
Mr Witkoff is due to hold talks with Putin on Tuesday on the latest proposals for ending Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine following negotiations between US and Ukrainian officials in Florida.
Amid fears in Europe that the plan risks rewarding Russian aggression by forcing Kyiv into a deal, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the latest version “looks better” during a visit to Paris on Monday to meet French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.
Mr Putin has signalled an openness to talks, saying last week that Mr Trump’s proposals for ending the war could be “the basis for future agreements,” while adding that no final version exists yet.
Still, he has given no sign that he is ready to roll back Russian demands.
Mr Witkoff, who will meet Mr Putin in Russia for the sixth time this year, promoted the original 28-point plan that emerged last month and was drawn up together with Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
Those proposals horrified officials in Ukraine and Europe by outlining Kremlin demands for concessions that Kyiv has repeatedly rejected.
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An October 14th phone call between Mr Witkoff and Mr Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov showed that the US envoy suggested they work together on a plan to end the war in Ukraine modelled on Mr Trump’s Gaza peace deal, according to a recording of the conversation reviewed and transcribed by Bloomberg.
Mr Ushakov and Mr Dmitriev also discussed the plans in an October 29th phone call.
The seizure of Pokrovsk, a defensive hub that’s been the focus of intense fighting for more than a year, would potentially open up the path for Russia to threaten the larger cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. It would offer Moscow a symbolic victory as Mr Putin continues to insist that Ukraine must surrender the entire Donetsk region under a deal to end the war.
Ukraine previously acknowledged that Russian troops had entered Pokrovsk, though it rejected Moscow’s claims that Kyiv’s forces in the city had been encircled.
US president Donald Trump has urged Russia and Ukraine to halt fighting along existing battle lines as part of the peace initiative. After meeting with Putin in Alaska in August, Mr Trump abandoned plans in October for a second summit with the Russian leader in Budapest when the US concluded that Moscow was not ready for substantive changes to its maximalist demands for ending the war.
Mr Zelenskiy, who began a visit to Ireland on Tuesday, has repeatedly said he will agree to a ceasefire.
Russia first attempted to occupy Pokrovsk, a former mining hub that is now almost totally destroyed, in July 2024. A surprise Ukrainian counteroffensive into Russia’s Kursk region the following month helped relieve the pressure as Moscow diverted forces to confront the incursion.
After Russia drove Ukrainian troops out of Kursk, with help from North Korean soldiers sent by Kim Jong-un to support Mr Putin, Moscow renewed strikes on Pokrovsk during the summer. – Bloomberg
