Trump envoy says Ukraine peace deal ‘really closed’ as two issues remain

US President Donald Trump’s outgoing envoy to Ukraine said a deal to end the war in Ukraine was “really close” and hinged on resolving just two major issues, but the Kremlin said radical changes needed to be made to some of the US proposals.

Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a “peacemaker” president, says ending Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II has so far been the most elusive foreign policy goal of his presidency.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of conflict between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops in the Donbass, which consists of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

U.S. special envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, who is due to step down in January, told the Reagan National Defense Forum that efforts to resolve the conflict were “in the last 10 yards,” which he said were always the most difficult.

Donbass and the nuclear power plant the main issue now

The two main outstanding issues, Kellogg said, were on territory — notably the future of Donbas — and the future of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which is under Russian control.

“If we fix those two issues, I think the rest of the things will work out pretty well,” Kellogg said Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. “We’re almost there.”

“We’re very, very close,” Kellogg said.

After President Vladimir Putin held four hours of talks in the Kremlin last week with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Putin’s top foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said “territorial issues” were discussed.

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That’s the Kremlin’s shorthand for Russian claims to all of Donbas, although Ukraine still controls at least 5,000 square kilometers (1,900 square miles) of the region. Almost all countries recognize Donbass as part of Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said handing over the rest of Donetsk would be illegal without a referendum and would give Russia a platform to launch attacks deeper into Ukraine in the future.

Ushakov was quoted by Russian media on Sunday as saying that the United States should “make serious, I would say radical changes to its papers” on Ukraine. He did not specify what changes Moscow wanted Washington to make.

Zelensky said Saturday that he had a long and “substantial” phone call with Vitkov and Kushner. The Kremlin has said it expects Kushner to do the main work of drafting a potential deal.

Two million men were killed or wounded, says Kellogg

Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who served in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq, said the scale of deaths and injuries caused by the war in Ukraine was “terrible” and unprecedented in a regional war.

Kellogg said that, together, Russia and Ukraine have suffered more than 2 million casualties, including dead and wounded, since the start of the war. Neither Russia nor Ukraine disclose reliable estimates of their losses.

Russia currently controls 19.2% of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, all of Luhansk, more than 80% of Donetsk, about 75% of Kherson and Zaporizhia, and parts of Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

A set of 28 leaked US peace proposals opens new tab emerged last month, alarming Ukrainian and European officials who said it bowed to Moscow’s main demands for NATO, Russian control of one-fifth of Ukraine and restrictions on Ukraine’s military.