Trump in desperate scramble to salvage Ukraine peace deal as he dispatches trusted envoy to Putin

Donald Trump has sent his trusted special envoy to Moscow for tough talks with Vladimir Putin, amid fears that his Ukraine peace plan will unravel.

A US official confirmed on Tuesday that Ukraine had agreed to a new 19-point agreement, but that the terms were not in the Kremlin’s favor and gave Washington and Kiev the final say on sensitive territorial disputes and American security guarantees.

Russian fforeign minister Sergei Lavrov He warned that the plan would erase ‘important agreements’ Putin reached with Trump. Alaska ‘The situation will be fundamentally different’ at the summit in August.

The US leader posted on Truth Social this afternoon after concerned figures in Washington said Putin would ‘immediately’ reject the new deal because of major concessions to Ukraine.

Trump said: ‘The original 28-point peace plan prepared by the US has been fine-tuned with additional input from both sides, leaving only a few sticking points.’

He added that he sent special envoy Steve Witkoff, the architect of the Gaza peace agreement, to meet Putin in Moscow.

‘I’m looking forward to meeting the president’ [Volodymyr] Zelensky and President Putin will meet soon, but only when the agreement to end this war is finalized,” Trump added.

Hopes that the bloody conflict could finally be brought to an end were boosted on Tuesday morning by news that Ukraine’s president had agreed to the terms of the new agreement. Skeptics warned that Putin would reject the new proposal.

President Zelensky is expected to meet with Trump administration officials in the USA

The agreement no longer includes guarantees of amnesty for atrocities committed during the war. Kyiv He agreed to limit his army to 800,000 men.

This initial plan permanently excluded Ukraine from NATO membership, limited its military to 600,000 men, proposed giving the rest of Donbas to Russia – albeit as a demilitarized zone – and mandated elections in Kiev within 100 days.

All of these items have reportedly since been changed or shelved for now.

Zelensky confirmed in his post about

Trump’s special envoy, US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, met with the Russian delegation in the United Arab Emirates on Monday for secret talks. The meeting followed Driscoll’s weekend talks in Geneva aimed at advancing peace with Ukraine, according to a U.S. official.

Excited by his success in Gaza, Trump last week stepped up pressure on Zelensky to end the war, which has killed 300,000 people since Putin launched his invasion in February 2022.

America’s European allies were reportedly stunned that Trump threatened to cut off intelligence sharing and arms supplies to force Zelensky into a deal.

Sources claimed that the US presented the peace plan to Kiev at the end of last week and set a deadline of Thursday for them to sign on the dotted line.

“Last week, the United States made tremendous progress toward a peace agreement by bringing both Ukraine and Russia to the table,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

‘There are several sensitive but not insurmountable details that need to be resolved and will require further discussions between Ukraine, Russia and the US.’

US Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Tolbert said: ‘Late Monday and throughout Tuesday, Minister Driscoll and his team held talks with the Russian delegation to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine.

‘Talks are going well and we remain optimistic. Secretary Driscoll is working closely with the White House and other U.S. agencies as these discussions progress.’

The Russian Ministry of Defense announced that 249 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down overnight

Ukraine strike hits a major Russian aircraft manufacturing facility, triggering ‘an afterglow’

Russian authorities said that three people died and at least 16 people were injured as a result of damage to residential buildings in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk and the cities of Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar.

Driscoll was tapped by Trump to lead the negotiations after the president met privately with Vice President J.D. Vance two weeks ago. A secretary official representing the U.S. military generally does not participate in diplomatic negotiations.

The ongoing negotiations took place amid brutal overnight bombings in Kiev, with Russian missiles destroying residential buildings.

Moscow triggered death and terror with new attacks on civilians; At least six people were killed, including an 86-year-old woman.

Residents’ cries for help were heard after the Iranian-designed Shahed unmanned aerial vehicle started a fire in a tower block and destroyed two power plants supplying hot water to homes.

A Russian drone flew about 50 miles inside the independent state of Moldova and then crashed into the roof of a house in the village of Nizhnie Kugureshty.

Meanwhile, Ukraine responded with air strikes against Russia.

Dramatic footage shows an insurgent Russian air defense missile hitting a residential building in the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in a new friendly fire incident; The wave of Ukrainian attacks here also causes casualties.

Russian officials said residential buildings were damaged, three people died and at least 16 people were injured in Novorossiysk and the cities of Rostov-on-Don and Krasnodar.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said 249 Ukrainian drones were shot down overnight, 116 over the Black Sea and 92 in the southern regions of Krasnodar and Rostov.

Russian drones attacking Ukraine’s Odessa region flew over Romanian airspace, forcing NATO to scramble four warplanes in response.

Russia hit two hot water power plants (CHP-5 and CHP-6) and a hydroelectric power plant in Kiev. In addition to electricity and water outages, there were also transportation disruptions in the city.

It is clear that the attack was aimed at forcing Ukraine to accept a negative peace plan.

A broken window in front of a residential building damaged after an air strike in Kiev today

Residents cried out for help after a Shahed drone strike triggered a fire in a tower block and destroyed two power plants providing piped hot water heating to homes.

Putin’s foreign affairs aide Yuri Ushakov said UK, EU and Ukraine-inspired changes to the original US draft presented at the weekend were ‘not constructive’.

On Saturday, leaders from Europe, Canada and Japan signed a joint statement at the G20 summit in South Africa, saying the peace deal included elements “necessary for a just and lasting peace” but would “require additional work,” citing concerns over borders and territory from the Ukrainian military.

The EU has presented a modified version of the US peace plan for Ukraine that rolls back proposed limits on Kiev’s armed forces and territorial concessions.

The document prepared by Britain, France and Germany, called Europe’s E3 powers, proposes to limit the total upper limit of the Ukrainian army to 800,000 in ‘peacetime’ rather than 600,000.

It is also stated that instead of pre-determining whether certain regions should be recognized as ‘de facto Russian’, as the US plan suggests, ‘negotiations on the swap of territories will begin from the Line of Contact’.

He proposes that Ukraine receive a security guarantee from the United States similar to NATO’s Article 5.