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The US have offered to create a “free economic zone” in Ukraine-controlled parts of the eastern Donbas region
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The US will send a representative to talk in Europe on Ukraine this weekend if it it’ll aid progress on a ceasefire deal, President Donald Trump said on Thursday.
“We’ll see whether or not we attend the meeting,” Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“We’ll be attending the meeting on Saturday in Europe if we think there’s a good chance. And we don’t want to waste a lot of time if we think it’s negative.”
This comes after Mr Trump said he is “sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting” as he grows “frustrated” with both Ukraine and Russia, a White House spokesperson has said.
The Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters earlier that day that ceding territory remained a major sticking point in negotiations and the US had offered to create a “free economic zone” in the Ukraine-controlled parts of the eastern Donbas which Russia has demanded that Ukraine cede.
“They see it as Ukrainian troops withdrawing from the Donetsk region, and the compromise is supposedly that Russian troops will not enter this part of Donetsk region. They do not know who will govern this territory,” he said, adding that Russia is referring to it as a “demilitarised zone”.
German chancellor Friedrich Merz said he expects talks with US officials to take place this weekend, discussing a proposal put forward by the European side for peace in Ukraine.
In a call on Wednesday, “we made a proposal to [Donald Trump] that we would finalise the documents together with the American government over the weekend,” Mr Merz said.
“If we now proceed with this process as we envisage, there will be talks with the American government over the weekend,” he added at a press conference with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte.
Russia is open to foreign investment, the Kremlin said on Thursday, following reports that Donald Trumps’ Ukraine peace plan included major proposals to invest in Russia rare earths and energy.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the plans were detailed in appendices to peace proposals handed to European counterparts over recent weeks.
They include a plan to restore Russian energy flows to Europe and for U.S. financial firms and other businesses to tap $200 billion of frozen Russian sovereign assets for projects in Ukraine, the paper said.
Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, was interested in foreign investment. When asked about the US frozen asset proposals reported by the Journal, Peskov declined comment.
Leaders of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ group of nations discussed progress on mobilising frozen Russian sovereign assets during a virtual meeting on Thursday, British prime minister Keir Starmer’s office said.
The call came a day after Britain, France and Germany spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump about Washington’s latest push for a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine.
Kyiv has pushed back against a US backed plan proposed last month that would require major concessions to Moscow, while European powers are working on security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a potential accord.
The leaders agreed on Thursday that the U.S.-led peace plan was a “pivotal moment” for Ukraine.
Russian forces took control of the village of Lyman in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, state news agencies cited the Defence Ministry as saying on Thursday.
The Independent could not independently verify the battlefield reports.
Moscow’s forces have continued advancing forwards on the Ukrainian frontline, as US mediators work to hash out a deal between the two countries.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that holding elections in Ukraine during wartime would require a ceasefire.
“There must be a ceasefire – at least or the duration of the election process and voting. This is what needs to be discussed. Frankly speaking, here in Ukraine, we believe that America should talk to the Russian side about this,” he told a meeting of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ group of nations.
Wartime elections are forbidden by law but Zelensky, whose term expired last year, is facing renewed pressure from president Donald Trump to hold a vote.
Ukrainian drones hit a Russian oil rig in the Caspian sea for the first time, a source in Ukraine’s SBU security service said according to Reuters.
The drones struck the Filanovsky oil rig, which belongs to Russian oil major Lukoil. At least four strikes were recorded on the target.
The strikes halted the facility’s extraction of oil and gas, the source said.
Lukoil did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
President Vladimir Putin thanked the Russian army on Thursday after commanders told him that their forces had taken full control of the town of Siversk in eastern Ukraine, but Ukraine’s military said it remained in control there.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield claim around Siversk, a longstanding target in Russia’s slow drive to capture all of Donetsk region.
Commanders told Putin that the capture of Siversk, a town with a pre-war population of over 10,000 people, was a stepping stone towards taking Sloviansk, one of the two biggest cities in Donetsk still under Ukrainian control.
They told Putin that Ukraine had tried to defend Siversk, which Russians call Seversk, with various trenches and fortifications, and that the Russian army had defeated it by choking off its logistics routes, outflanking its troops and carrying out targeted assaults.
President Donald Trump will send a representative to talks in Europe on Ukraine this weekend there is a real chance of signing a peace agreement, the White House said on Thursday.
“The president is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war, and he is sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
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