“Ukraine – Russia”

The Trump administration’s Army secretary sat down Tuesday with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi to present a slimmed-down plan to end Moscow’s 33-month-old invasion of Ukraine.

Dan Driscoll arrived in the Middle East after representatives from Washington and Kyiv hammered out a revised framework to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

“The Ukrainians have agreed to the peace deal,” a US official said. “There are some minor details to be sorted out but they have agreed to a peace deal.”

Updated peace plan could be a deal Ukraine will take – eventually

Donald Trump wants a peace deal in Ukraine very badly.

Kyiv wants peace even more, just not at any cost.

That’s why when the US began pushing it to agree to a deal by Thanksgiving on what looked close to surrender terms, Ukraine pushed back.

It scrambled senior officials to talks in Geneva and all of Sunday we saw delegates from the US and Ukraine shuttling back and forth between the two main venues in black limousines with darkened windows.

Things are very bad in Ukraine right now. The former spokeswoman for Ukraine’s clearly overmatched comedian leader says things could get a lot worse if Ukraine’s government walks away from peace this time.

“Every subsequent deal for Ukraine will only be worse — because we are losing. We are losing people, territory, and the economy,” Iuliia Mendel, press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from 2019 to 2021, wrote in an X post this weekend as negotiators went back and forth in marathon peace talks. 

The bureaucrats had no strategy

The 28-point plan the White House negotiated with the Kremlin is not a done deal. It’s not even close. It is a blueprint, no more, no less. In any case, Trump is an unpredictable player — he could back out at any moment. But this time, I don’t think he will.

The plan, first circulated on a Telegram channel, is clearly not a great one for Ukraine. But, equally, it isn’t a “capitulation” and those who have described it as such don’t really want a deal. Ukraine will be able to improve on it. But, admittedly, not by much. “You don’t have the cards,” Trump once told Zelensky. Unfortunately, after the recent corruption scandal, his hand is weaker than ever.

A “tremendous amount of progress” has been achieved in talks to finalise a US-proposed peace plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said.

But “there’s still some work to be done”, Rubio said after meeting Ukrainian and European negotiators in Geneva, Switzerland.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said there were “signals that President [Donald] Trump’s team is hearing us”.

Donald Trump said Ukraine has “zero gratitude” for his efforts to end the war after splits emerged over his latest peace plan.

The US president also took aim at Europe for continuing to buy Russian oil in a post on Truth Social.

“I inherited a war that should have never happened, a war that is a loser for everyone, especially the millions of people that have so needlessly died,” Mr Trump said.

Donald Trump’s latest plan for ending the war in Ukraine would see territory ceded to Russia, Russia readmitted to the G8 and Ukraine banned from joining Nato, according to drafts of the proposal seen by Axios, AFP and the Associated Press.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he expected to discuss the plan with Trump “in coming days,” adding any deal must bring a “dignified peace” with “respect for our independence, our sovereignty.”

Ukraine faces a triple threat amid growing casualties, a corruption scandal and a peace plan that amounts to capitulation

Gennady Druzhenko reckons that of the 1,000-odd fellow military recruits in his training camp, he is the only one who is there willingly.

The vast majority are conscripts, many of them old or unhealthy, press-ganged off the streets to plug the growing gaps in Ukraine’s front lines.

His comrades’ morale could not get much worse, but in the wake of the corruption scandal last week engulfing Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, a new low has been reached.

“Some of these guys are nearly 60 and it’s a tragedy that they’re being mobilised anyway,” Mr Druzhenko told The Telegraph.

Live – Ukraine and US to hold peace talks in Switzerland

Ukraine and the United States will hold peace talks in Switzerland on how to end the war, a negotiator for Kyiv has said.

Donald Trump gave Volodymyr Zelensky until Thursday to approve his 28-point peace plan, which would see Ukraine surrender key territory, cut the size of its army and destroy any hope of joining Nato.

Soon it will be four years. An unspeakable slaughter with horrifying numbers—300,000 Russian soldiers killed and perhaps 100,000 Ukrainians. Cities pulverized. The time of the bloodlands returned, with Vladimir Putin taking up the double legacy of Stalin and Hitler.

And all this for what? A village taken here, one retaken there. A motorized unit arriving to plant a flag on a church steeple and take a photo—then bolting immediately. Months of monstrous fighting in Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar (two battles I covered) and in Andriivka to capture tiny towns of which nothing remains but piles of rubble.

From the comments …

Doesn’t BHL understand that allowing Ukraine to hold on but not to win is precisely the West’s objective in the war?

And it is no scandal at all, but rather simple self-defense — letting the Ukrainians do our fighting for us. Eventually, Russia was going to attack the West, anyway. Now it will hesitate to do so, given its depleted military, political, economic and diplomatic standing.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he is ready to work with the US on “their vision” for ending the war with Russia.

Under the widely leaked plan, Kyiv would cede significant areas of the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine that it still controls, cut the size of its army, and pledge not to join Nato – proposals it has previously ruled out.

The White House has pushed back on claims that Ukraine was not involved in the drafting of the plan, which emerged following meetings between US special envoy Steve Witkoff and and Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev.

Hmmmm … Live – US tells Ukraine: Sign deal by Thursday or have weapons cut off

In July this year a 17-year-old travelled 500 miles from his home in eastern Ukraine to collect a bomb and a phone hidden in a park in the western city of Rivne.

He says he was promised $2,000 (£1,520) to plant the bomb in a van used by Ukraine’s military conscription service.

“When I was connecting the wires, I thought it could explode then. I thought I might die,” he told the BBC.

Vlad is one of hundreds of children and older teenagers who the Ukrainian government alleges have been recruited online by Russia, and offered payment to carry out sabotage and other attacks against their own country. His name has been changed to protect his anonymity.

Defeat, political implosion and civil war – those are the jeopardies that Volodymyr Zelensky faces as Ukraine heads into the most difficult and probably the last winter of the war. Evermore effective Russian strikes against Ukraine’s energy and transport infrastructure are likely to plunge swaths of the country into cold and darkness. Russian troops continue to push forwards slowly and bloodily in Donbas and, more dangerously, on the southern flank in Zaporizhzhia. Desertions from the Ukrainian army are up four times since last year and the number of deserters now matches the number of active fighters. The US has turned off the money taps and Europe struggles to produce the cash Kyiv needs to keep its war effort going.

In WW II the USA had a rough total of 122,354 deserters and conscientious objectors across all service branches.

Of the 72,354 CO’s 37K served in non-combat roles i.e. Medics or in civilian service.

Ukraine just had 100K of young fighting age men literally flee the country joining an estimated total of 650K who have fled since the war began.

Update: Senior US officials confirm details of 28-point plan to end Ukraine war

WASHINGTON — The US’ sweeping 28-point blueprint to end the nearly four-year war between Russia and Ukraine proposes territorial freezes, troop caps, economic reintegration for Moscow, and a future “Peace Council” chaired by President Donald Trump, senior US officials confirmed exclusively to The Post.

The plan, which Kyiv and Moscow have not publicly accepted, outlines the most detailed picture yet of what Washington foresees as a way to end the war — and was built on weeks of US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s consultations with both the Russians and Ukrainians, the officials said.

I wonder if Freeland is fleeing Ukraine’s sinking ship or will she keep her job as Zelensky’s Bagman?

Rhodes has a Grifter Award?

— Blazingcatfur (@fancypants_s) November 20, 2025

White House tells Volodymyr Zelensky he must accept terms of US president’s 28-point proposal

Ukraine will be forced to cut the size of its army under a peace deal agreed between Donald Trump and Russia.

The US president has been working with Moscow on a secret 28-point proposal inspired by the ceasefire agreement in Gaza.

The White House has told Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, that he must accept the terms of the plan, which will require his country to cede territory, give up some weapons and trim its armed forces, sources have said.

After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s close associate, Timur Mindich, fled to Israel after allegedly masterminding a €100 million corruption scheme, it appears the Ukrainian public is turning on their leader — at least according to polls cited by a Ukrainian member of parliament.

“According to the polls I’ve seen, Zelensky’s popularity has fallen below 20 percent,” said Ukrainian parliament member Yaroslav Zheleznyak.