By Guy Faulconbridge and Steve Holland
MOSCOW/WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday for talks on a possible way to end the deadliest European conflict since World War Two.
Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the war in Ukraine, which his administration casts as a “bloodbath” and “a proxy war”, but his efforts so far, including a summit with Putin in Alaska in August, have not yet brought peace.
A leaked set of 28 U.S. draft peace proposals emerged last week, spooking Ukrainian and European officials who felt it bowed to Moscow’s key demands on NATO, Moscow’s control of a fifth of Ukraine and restrictions on Ukraine’s army.
European powers then gave their counter-proposal for peace and at talks in Geneva, the U.S. and Ukraine said they had created an “updated and refined peace framework” to end the war.
Putin has said the discussions so far are not about a draft agreement but about a set of proposals that he said last week “could be the basis for future agreements”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Witkoff’s meeting with Putin would be in the second half of Tuesday, but he refused to be drawn on Russia’s red lines, saying that megaphone diplomacy was not helpful.
A White House official said Witkoff would be joined by Kushner for his trip to Russia.
Putin has repeatedly said he is ready to talk peace but that if Ukraine refuses an agreement, then Russia’s forces will advance further and take more Ukrainian territory.
Russian forces control more than 19% of Ukraine, or 115,600 square km, up one percentage point from two years ago, and have advanced in 2025 at the fastest pace since 2022, according to pro-Ukrainian maps.
Russian military commanders told Putin on Monday that Russian forces had captured the frontline Ukrainian towns of Pokrovsk and Vovchansk.
U.S. officials say more than 1.2 million men have been killed or injured in the war. Neither Ukraine nor Russia discloses their losses.
TRUMP, EUROPE, NATO AND BUSINESS WITH RUSSIA
Since the U.S. draft proposals emerged late last month, European powers have been scrambling to bolster Ukraine against what they see as a punitive pro-Russian peace that could open up Russia to U.S. investment in oil, gas and rare earths and return Moscow to the G8.
Key Russian demands include a pledge that Ukraine would never join NATO, caps on the Ukrainian army, Russian control of the whole of Donbas, recognition of Russian control of Crimea, Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, and protection for Russian speakers and Russian Orthodox believers in Ukraine.
Ukraine says those would amount to capitulation, and leave it prone to eventual conquest by Russia, though the United States has also floated a 10-year security guarantee for Kyiv.
Witkoff, Kushner, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, for talks on Sunday at Witkoff’s Shell Bay club near Miami.
“We share the view that the war must be brought to a fair end,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on X after talks in Paris.
Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022. The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 after a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution and Russia annexed Crimea, with Russian-backed separatist forces fighting Ukraine’s armed forces.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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