Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has agreed to a meeting with US President Donald Trump to discuss ending the war with Russia. (Reuters: Alina Smutko)
In short:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he is planning to meet with US President Donald Trump on Sunday.
Mr Zelenskyy says he spoke with US representatives about new ideas on how to bring peace with Russia.
What's next?
The Ukrainian president says the Sunday meeting will discuss key territorial questions and security guarantees.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he is planning to meet with US President Donald Trump on Sunday to discuss territory and security guarantees as they search for ways to end Russia's war in Ukraine.
"This meeting is specifically for the purpose of finalising everything as much as we can," Mr Zelenskyy said.
The meeting follows weeks of stepped-up diplomatic efforts.
"A lot can be decided before the New Year," Mr Zelenskyy said on X.
Mr Zelenskyy said earlier that he had spoken with Mr Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner for about an hour on how to end the war.
"There are some new ideas on how to bring the real peace closer, and it concerns formats, meetings, and, certainly, the timeline," he said on Telegram.
Mr Trump has been pushing for a deal to end the almost four-year-long war and, in recent weeks, peace efforts led by Mr Witkoff and Mr Kushner have been slowly inching forward.
Plans for peace
Earlier this week, Mr Zelenskyy presented a 20-point draft peace plan that he described as the main framework for ending the war.
The draft represented a slimmed-down version of an original 28-point plan the US previously discussed with the Russian side that was widely seen as mainly benefiting Moscow as it demanded Kyiv cede territory and put curbs on its army.
However, key territorial questions remain unresolved in the new 20-point draft, Mr Zelenskyy said, adding that a meeting with Mr Trump would be required to solve the most sensitive issues.
Military chaplain Mykola sings a carol for members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces during a Christmas celebration in Donetsk region, one of the areas Russia wants Ukraine to give up. (Supplied: Volodymyr Petrov, Ukrainian Armed Forces)
Ukraine and the US had not found common ground on demands that Ukraine cede the parts of Donbas that it still controls — or on the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is controlled by Russian forces.
Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that the Kremlin was analysing the documents on ending the war that were brought to Moscow by Russia's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev from the US.
Mr Zelenskyy said that Ukraine's top negotiator Rustem Umerov planned to have one more conversation with the US negotiators later in the day.
"We are truly working 24/7 to bring closer the end of this brutal Russian war against Ukraine and to ensure that all documents and steps are realistic, effective, and reliable," he said.
Disputed territory
Russian President Vladimir Putin told some of the country's top businessmen that he might be open to swapping some territory controlled by Russian forces in Ukraine but that he wanted the whole of Donbas, the Kommersant newspaper reported.
Kommersant reported that Putin briefed top businessmen on the details of the plan at a late-night Kremlin meeting on December 24.
"Vladimir Putin asserted that the Russian side is still ready to make the concessions that he made in Anchorage. In other words, that 'Donbas is ours','" Kommersant reported.
In essence, Mr Putin wants the whole of Donbas but outside that area "a partial exchange of territories from the Russian side is not ruled out," the newspaper said.
The full detail of the US proposal has not been disclosed, although Russian officials have repeatedly referred to unspecified "understandings" reached between Mr Putin and Mr Trump at a summit in Anchorage, Alaska, in August.
Russia controls all of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, about 90 per cent of Donbas, 75 per cent of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to Russian estimates.
Mr Putin said on December 19 that he thought a peace deal should be based on the principles of the conditions he set out in 2024: Ukraine withdrawing from all of Donbas, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and Kyiv officially renouncing its aim to join NATO.
According to Kommersant, Mr Putin also raised the issue of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe, at his meeting with businessmen.
Mr Putin, according to Kommersant, said that joint Russian-US management of the nuclear power station was being discussed.
Ukraine faces daily missile and drone onslaughts from Russia. Chernihiv was hit on Christmas Day. (Supplied: State Emergency Service of Ukraine)
Fighting continues
For now, the fighting continues with both sides launching strikes over the past few days.
On Thursday night Russian drone attacks damaged Slovakia, Palau and Liberia-flagged vessels in ports in Ukraine's Odesa and Mykolaiv regions, Ukraine's deputy prime minister said on Friday.
There were no casualties, Oleksiy Kuleba said in a statement on the Telegram messaging app, adding that the attacks also caused power cuts in the Odesa region.
Ukraine used British Storm Shadow missiles to attack a Russian oil refinery on Thursday, the Ukrainian military said.
The Novoshakhtinsk refinery was hit by the missiles and "numerous explosions" were recorded, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a social media post.
It has already used the British missiles to attack targets inside Russia.
"Units of the air force of the armed forces of Ukraine successfully struck the Novoshakhtinsk oil products plant in the Rostov region of the Russian Federation with Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles," the statement said.
The military said that the Novoshakhtinsk plant is one of the main suppliers of petrol products in southern Russia "and is directly involved in supplying the Russian Federation's armed forces", particularly with diesel fuel and aviation kerosene.
Ukraine, which faces daily missile and drone onslaughts from Russia, has sought to respond with attacks inside Russia on energy and infrastructure facilities.
Reuters, AFP
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