Russia says preparing contacts with US concerning revised Ukraine peace plan

By Burc Eruygur

ISTANBUL (AA) - Russia is preparing “relevant contacts” with the US concerning a revised Ukraine peace plan under discussion over the past weeks, the Kremlin said on Thursday.

In remarks to the state-owned Radio Mayak radio broadcasting company, spokesman Dmitry Peskov defined the past two weeks as “very busy,” with negotiations held in European capitals between Ukrainian, American, and European officials.

Peskov said the meetings, which also involved Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, revolved around a “set of key points” agreed on at the Aug. 15 Alaska summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump, and later talks between Putin and US envoy Steve Witkoff.

“Let's see what happened to this set of talking points, and see how Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians have influenced them. To understand how much it has changed, we are currently preparing the relevant contacts with the Americans,” Peskov said.

The remarks come as Zelenskyy said earlier that a new round of talks with US officials will take place on Friday and Saturday in the US, and that Kyiv’s delegation is already on its way to meet the American side.

This week, Trump said he thinks they are “closer now than we have been ever” to a settlement to end the over-three-and-a-half-year Russia-Ukraine war.

A US official who briefed reporters earlier had said Trump was “really pleased” with progress made in talks in Europe, and that roughly 90% of the issues between the sides had been resolved, though key matters remain.

Officials said the proposed security guarantees for Ukraine include Article 5-like assurances, a reference to NATO's collective defense pledge, with Trump willing to submit these measures to the US Senate for ratification.

The US held two days of talks with Ukrainian and European leaders in Berlin. European leaders published a joint statement on Monday with a list of the security guarantees on the table, including a 800,000-strong Ukrainian army, a multinational force to support Ukraine and a US-led ceasefire monitoring system.