A renewed U.S. push to finish the war between Russia and Ukraine is gathering momentum, although a number of the key issues remain unresolved, officials said Tuesday.
The update was issued hours after Russia launched a wave of overnight attacks on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, with at the least seven people killed in strikes that hit city buildings and energy infrastructure. A Ukrainian attack on southern Russia killed three people and damaged homes, authorities said.
“Over the past week, the USA has made tremendous progress towards a peace deal by bringing each Ukraine and Russia to the table,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X.
“There are a number of delicate, but not insurmountable, details that should be sorted out and would require further talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the USA.”
President Donald Trump’s plan for ending the nearly four-year war emerged last week. It heavily favored Russia, prompting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to quickly engage with American negotiators. European leaders, fearing for their very own future amid Russian aggression but apparently sidelined by Trump in drawing up the proposals, scrambled to steer the negotiations toward accommodating their concerns.
Senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials said progress was made at talks in Geneva held on Sunday toward ending the war.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday peace efforts are gathering momentum and “are clearly at a vital juncture.”
“Negotiations are getting a brand new impetus. And we should always seize this momentum,” he said during at a video conference meeting of nations, led by France and the U.K., that would help police any ceasefire with Russia.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said of the talks: “I do think we’re moving in a positive direction and indications today that largely nearly all of the text, (Zelenskyy) is indicating, will be accepted.”
U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll met with Russian officials for several hours in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Tuesday, a U.S. official told The Associated Press.
Driscoll, who became a part of the American negotiating team lower than two weeks ago, is heading up the most recent phase of talks involving the terms of a possible peace settlement with Russia.
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The U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to debate sensitive negotiations, declined to offer details on how long the negotiations would last or what topics were being discussed, but noted that the Ukrainians were aware of the meeting and all sides have indicated they wanted to achieve a deal to halt the fighting as quickly as possible.
Oleksandr Bevz, certainly one of the Ukrainian delegates on the Geneva talks, said that the numbers of points within the proposed settlement was reduced, but he denied reports that the 28-point U.S. peace plan now consisted of 19 points.
”(The document) goes to proceed to alter. We will confirm that it was reduced to take out points not referring to Ukraine, to exclude duplicates and for editing purposes,” Bevz told the AP, adding that some points relating solely to relations between Russia and the U.S. were excluded.
Zelenskyy said late Monday that “the list of crucial steps to finish the war can develop into workable,”He said that he planned to debate “sensitive” outstanding issues with Trump.
Rustem Umerov, a senior adviser to Zelenskyy, posted on X on Tuesday that Zelenskyy hoped to finalize a cope with Trump “on the earliest suitable date in November.”
Russian officials have been reserved of their comments on the peace plan. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Tuesday that Moscow is in contact with U.S. officials about peace efforts.
“We expect them to offer us with a version they consider an interim one by way of completing the phase of coordinating this text with the Europeans and the Ukrainians,” Lavrov said.
European leaders have cautioned that the road to peace will probably be long.
Russia fired 22 missiles of varied types and greater than 460 drones at Ukraine overnight, Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. The strikes knocked out water, electricity and warmth in parts of Kyiv. Images showed a big fire spreading in a nine-story residential constructing in Kyiv’s eastern Dniprovskyi district.
Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said 20 people were wounded in Kyiv. The Russian Defense Ministry said that it targeted military-industrial facilities and energy assets. The strikes were a response to Ukrainian attacks on civilian objects in Russia, the ministry said.
Liubov Petrivna, a 90-year-old resident of a damaged constructing within the Dniprovskyi district, told the AP that “absolutely all the pieces” in her apartment was shattered by the strike and “glass rained down” on her.
Petrivna said that she didn’t imagine within the peace plan now under discussion.
“Nobody will ever do anything about it,” she said. Russian President Vladimir Putin “won’t stop until he finishes us off.”
Large Ukrainian drone attack
The overnight Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s southern region of Krasnodar was “certainly one of the longest and most massive” and wounded six people, Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev said.
Russian air defenses destroyed 249 Ukrainian drones overnight above various Russian regions and the occupied Crimean Peninsula, the Russian Defense Ministry said Tuesday.
Ukraine said that its drones and missiles struck an aviation repair plant and a drone production facility, in addition to an oil refinery and an oil terminal.
It was the fourth-largest Ukrainian drone attack on Russia because the start of the war on Feb. 24, 2022, in keeping with an AP tally.
Konstantin Toropin reported from Washington. John Leicester in Paris, and Stephen McGrath in Leamington Spa, England, contributed to this report.