Volodymyr Zelenskyy said talks with US representatives on a peace plan for Ukraine had been constructive but not easy as he pivoted to planned consultations with European leaders over coming days. The Ukrainian president held a call on Saturday with Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner and is set to meet with the UK’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Friedrich Merz in London on Monday for talks on the peace negotiations. “The American representatives know the basic Ukrainian positions,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Sunday. “The conversation was constructive, although not easy.”
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni spoke with Zelenskyy by phone on Sunday ahead of his planned visits to London, Brussels and Rome and reaffirmed Italy’s solidarity after what she called a fresh wave of “indiscriminate” Russian strikes on civilian targets, her office said. Meloni announced the dispatch of emergency supplies to support Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and population and said generators provided by Italian companies would be shipped in the coming weeks, the statement said.
British foreign secretary Yvette Cooper will meet her American counterpart Marco Rubio in Washington on Monday, the UK Foreign Office announced, amid the intensified push to end the war in Ukraine. The visit is her first to the US capital since becoming the UK’s top diplomat in September. “The UK and US will reaffirm their commitment to reaching a peace deal in Ukraine,” the Foreign Office said, also noting Britain supported Donald Trump’s “ongoing efforts to secure a just and lasting peace”.
The Kremlin has heaped praise on Trump’s latest national security strategy, calling it an encouraging change of policy that largely aligns with Russian thinking. The remarks follow the publication of a White House document on Friday that criticises the EU and says Europe is at risk of “civilisational erasure”, while making clear the US is keen to establish better relations with Russia, reports Shaun Walker. US officials claim they are in the final stage of reaching a peace agreement but there is little sign that either Ukraine or Russia is willing to sign the framework deal drawn up by Trump’s negotiating team.
Donald Trump may walk away from the Ukrainian war, the US president’s oldest son has said. In a lengthy tirade against the purpose of continued fighting in Ukraine, Donald Trump Jr also said in comments to a Middle East conference that Ukraine’s “corrupt” rich had fled their country, leaving “what they believed to be the peasant class” to fight the war, reports Patrick Wintour. Meanwhile, Trump said he felt “a little bit disappointed” with Zelenskyy for not engaging with the US plan to end the war, claiming on Sunday that the Ukrainian president “hasn’t yet read the proposal, that was as of a few hours ago”.
Russian missile, drone and shelling attacks on Sunday and Saturday night killed at least four people in Ukraine. Three people were killed and 10 others wounded in shelling by Russian troops in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the regional prosecutor said, while local officials in the Chernihiv region said a man was killed in a drone attack and that a combined missile and drone attack on infrastructure in the central city of Kremenchuk caused power and water outages.
