Trump fine-tunes plan to end Ukraine war

WASHINGTON, November 27 ------ President Donald Trump said his plan to end the war in Ukraine has been “fine-tuned” and he’s sending envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to meet with Ukrainian officials.

Trump suggested he could eventually meet with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but not until further progress has been made in negotiations. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday evening aboard Air Force One, Trump said resolving the war was difficult, and described what had been a 28-point plan as a work in progress. “That was not a plan – it was a concept,” Trump said.

Trump’s plan for ending the nearly four-year war emerged last week. It heavily favored Russia, prompting Zelensky to quickly engage with American negotiators. 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 toward accommodating their concerns. Trump said he believed Witkoff would be meeting with Putin next week in Moscow, with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, potentially joining the meeting. “People are starting to realize it’s a good deal for both parties,” Trump said.

The president played down the element of his plan that would require Ukraine to cede territory to Russia, suggesting that Russian forces were already likely to seize the land they're seeking. “The way it’s going, if you look, it’s just moving in one direction," Trump said. "So eventually that’s land that over the next couple of months might be gotten by Russia anyway.” At the center of Trump’s plan is the call on Ukraine to concede the entirety of its eastern Donbas region, even though a vast swath of that land remains in Ukrainian control. Analysts at the independent Institute for the Study of War have estimated it would take several years for the Russian military to completely seize the territory, based on its current rate of advances.

Trump made his comments after Driscoll held talks late Monday and throughout Tuesday with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to discuss the emerging proposal. “The talks are going well, and we remain optimistic,” Lt. Col. Jeff Tolbert, spokesman for the Army secretary, said in a statement. Witkoff, a real estate developer turned diplomat, has been Trump’s chief interlocutor with Putin, while Driscoll, who is close to Vance, has stepped up his involvement in the administration’s peace push in recent days. As the talks were taking place, Russia launched a wave of overnight attacks on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, with at 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.

Trump spoke to reporters after Bloomberg News published a transcript of an Oct. 14 call between Witkoff and Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, where Witkoff coached his counterpart on how Putin should handle a call with Trump. Trump downplayed Witkoff’s reported approach as “a very standard form of negotiation.” But US Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who has been critical of Trump’s approach to Ukraine, said the transcript showed Witkoff favors the Russians. “He cannot be trusted to lead these negotiations. Would a Russian paid agent do less than he? He should be fired,” Bacon said on social media.

Source: mb.com.ph