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Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff holds talks with Russian leader in St Petersburg
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Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine has claimed that the country could be partitioned like Berlin after the Second World War as part of a peace deal – as the US president urged Russia to “get moving” on a ceasefire.
Keith Kellogg told The Times that British and French troops could adopt zones of control in the west of the country, forming a “reassurance force”, while Russia’s army could remain in the occupied east – separated by Ukrainian forces and a demilitarised zone.
The Anglo-French-led force west of the Dnipro river – which bisects Ukraine from north to south – would “not be provocative at all” to the Kremlin, said Mr Kellog, who was excluded from peace talks last month because Russia complained that he was “too close” to Kyiv.
It came as four people were injured in Kyiv and Kharkiv during an overnight barrage of Russian drone strikes, which damaged residential buildings and sparked fires, also hitting the Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Mr Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin for talks on a “Ukrainian settlement” in St Petersburg lasting four hours on Friday.
Donald Trump has been “continually frustrated with both sides of this conflict”, the White House has said.
Speaking after it emerged that Mr Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff had met Vladimir Putin once again in Russia, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters: “This is another step in the negotiating process towards a ceasefire and an ultimate peace deal in Russia and Ukraine.
“As these negotiations are ongoing, I obviously will not get ahead of the president or his team, but I think the president has been quite clear that he’s been continually frustrated with both sides of this conflict, and he wants to see this fighting end.”
Speaking with The Independent’s foreign affairs editor Sam Kiley, former MI6 chief Sir Alex Younger suggested that Vladimir Putin’s leadership lacks a rationale unless in a “permanent state of antagonism.”
Russia’s forces are regrouping and preparing to launch a renewed assault in Kharkiv, a Ukrainian military grouping has warned.
The Kyiv Independent reported the Khortytsia group as saying that, while no offensive actions had been carried out by Russian troops towards Kharkiv over the past 24 hours, Moscow’s forces are actively replenishing their units and preparing to resume their offensive.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has claimed that Donald Trump seems to understand much more about what is happening in Ukraine than any European leader.
Speaking at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in southern Turkey, Mr Lavrov reiterated that Mr Trump understood the need to address the root causes of the conflict in Ukraine to resolve it, a phrase repeatedly used by Moscow.
Mutiple Republican members of the US congress were so alarmed by Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff’s remarks about Russia’s war during an interview with Tucker Carlson that they called the White House national security adviser and secretary of state Marco Rubio to complain, a source has told Reuters.
During the interview last month, Mr Witkoff praised Mr Putin as “super smart” and not “a bad guy”, while claiming the “central issue” and “elephant in the room” in peace negotiations is whether Ukraine can cede four regions – which he was unable to name – to Russia.
According to the report, some US officials worry that Moscow is taking advantage of Mr Witkoff’s – a former real estate mogul – lack of experience at the negotiating table.
“Witkoff must go, and Rubio must take his place,” Eric Levine, a major Republican donor, said in a letter sent on 26 March to a group including fellow donors to the party.
Shortly after dining with a Russian negotiator in Washington last week, Donald Trump’s envoy to Moscow is reported to have told the US president that the quickest way to end the war would be to support a strategy handing Vladimir Putin the four Ukrainian regions he sought to illegally annex seven months into his full-scale invasion.
Steve Witkoff, a former real estate mogul, who met with Mr Putin on Friday, was said to have made the remarks by two US officials and five people familiar with the situation, Reuters reported. Mr Witkoff has previously been unable to name all four regions to which he referred.
However, Mr Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg is claimed by two sources to have pushed back against Mr Witkoff, saying that Ukraine would never agree to completely hand over all four territories to Russia.
The meeting is reported to have ended without Mr Trump making a decision to change Washington’s strategy.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan have discussed efforts to secure a ceasefire in the Ukraine war, a Turkish diplomatic source has told Reuters.
The pair also discussed energy cooperation issues and bilateral relations during a meeting on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in southern Turkey, the source said.
Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that Ukraine had carried out five attacks on Russian energy infrastructure over the past day, in an alleged violation of a US-brokered moratorium on such strikes.
Ukraine and Russia agreed to pause strikes on each other’s energy facilities last month, but both sides have repeatedly accused each other of breaking the moratorium.
It was not possible to verify Russia’s claims, and Moscow has repeatedly made false claims about Ukrainian attacks since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Our associate editor Sean O’Grady writes:
There’s a terrible sense of poignancy – if not doom – around all the meetings of the “coalition of the willing”, impressive as the grandiloquent words, the formidable roll call of nations and the glittering array of military uniforms might be.
To be brutally frank, and with the best will in the world, these capable, dedicated ministers and generals may be wasting their time.
The problem is American resistance to the whole idea. The danger is that if Vladimir Putin doesn’t like the COTW reassurance force – and everything suggests that he hates it – and obstructs Donald Trump’s peace deal, then Trump will agree.
The best Putin will accept so far is a conventional UN peacekeeping force, ie the kind of thing that so recently proved useless and was humiliated by Israel in Lebanon. No Nato members, under any flag, will be allowed in. If nothing is agreed, Putin will carry on, likely with Trump’s acquiescence – because it seems to me that Trump is basically a coward.
Ukraine can nearly supply its armed forces with the full range of military equipment if requires, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
In remarks reported by the Kyiv Independent, Oleksandr Kamyshin told a briefing marking Ukraine’s Gunsmith Day, in which it was said that Ukraine had developed a total of 324 types of weapons domestically between 2022 and 2024: “Today, according to various estimates, 30 per cent to 40 per cent of what our troops use on the front lines is made in Ukraine.
“It’s not only about war — it’s about our economy. As of last year, defence manufacturing made up a significant share of our GDP. After our victory, I’m confident we’ll be exporting Ukrainian-made weapons to the world.”
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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Trump envoy suggests dividing up Ukraine like post-war Berlin as four injured by drones – The Independent
