Ukraine-Russia struggle newest: Trump says ‘strong words’ exchanged in name with European leaders

Read everything you need to know about Donald Trump’s latest comments in just five bullet points with The Independent’s Bulletin…

Ukraine last night officially handed over its point-by-point response to the latest US peace plan, according to a report in Axios.

Donald Trump has intensified the pressure on Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to accept a peace plan conceding major territorial losses for Ukraine.

Zelensky’s national security advisor and chief negotiator Rustem Umerov has now forwarded the Ukrainian response to Jared Kushner, Trump’s advisor and son-in-law.

The response includes comments and proposed ideas to “make the whole thing doable”, according to a Ukrainian official.

This follows days of consultations with European allies, including with Keir Starmer and the French president Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz, who held a phone call with Trump on Wednesday.

A virtual meeting between the US and Ukraine is expected to take place on Thursday to continue discussions on the peace plan, a Ukrainian official said.

As we reported earlier this week, Donald Trump has called on Ukraine to hold elections, accusing Kyiv of no longer being a democracy.

“They’re using war not to hold an election, but I would think the Ukrainian people … should have that choice. And maybe [Volodymyr] Zelensky would win. I don’t know who would win,” he told Politico in an interview.

“But they haven’t had an election in a long time. You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.”

But can Ukraine really hold an election during wartime?

Ukraine has been under martial law since February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. The country’s constitution provides for martial law in wartime, and a separate law bars the holding of elections while it remains in force.

Beyond being illegal, a nationwide vote would pose serious security risks as Russia bombs Ukrainian cities with missiles and drones.

And with around one-fifth of the country under Russian occupation and millions displaced abroad, organising a nationwide ballot is widely seen as logistically impossible.

It would also be difficult to find a way for Ukrainian soldiers on the front line to cast their votes.

Although Mr Zelensky’s term formally expired in May 2024, Ukraine’s constitution allows him to legitimately remain in office until a newly elected president is sworn in.

Earlier this week, various reports emerged that Donald Trump was seeking a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine “by Christmas”.

The US has been pushing both sides to accept a peace deal, but large differences remain, particularly over the issue of territory.

But the Financial Times reported that Volodymyr Zelensky has “days” to respond to a peace deal, a timeline issued to him during a tense phone call with Trump’s peace envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

A source familiar with the timeline told the FT that Trump hoped to finalise a peace deal “by Christmas”.

The Telegraph also reported on the phone call which they said lasted two hours.

But Washington denied on Wednesday that it was pressuring Kyiv into accepting a deal which it dislikes, with an unnamed official telling the Wall Street Journal that the Trump administration’s goal was to reach an agreement acceptable to both sides.

Russia has come under a heavy drone attack by Ukraine, Moscow has claimed, in what it says would be the largest air attack in recent history.

The country’s Defence Ministry said that 287 drones have been downed by air defences. Unlike Ukraine, Russia does not typically report the total number of drones fired overnight, just those that are shot down.

The attack targeted 11 regions, including Bryansk, Moscow and Kaluga.

Typically, Ukrainian drones target military facilities, air bases, and oil depots, as Kyiv looks to damage Russia’s wartime economy.

The fall of Pokrovsk, a key town in Ukraine’s east, would not trigger a collapse in Ukraine’s defences but would weaken Kyiv at a sensitive juncture in the US-led negotiations to end the war, experts said.

Earlier this month, Moscow said it was in full control of Pokrovsk, two days before the US president Donald Trump’s special envoy and his son-in-law held Kremlin talks with president Vladimir Putin on a plan they say is close to being finalised.

Ten days on, Ukraine says its troops still hold positions in the north of the city, which was home to 60,000 people before Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion and served as an important logistical hub for the military until the fighting closed in.

“The new round of pressure on Ukraine to settle the conflict on unfavourable terms is happening in parallel with heavy fighting on this front, which helps Russia because it affects Trump’s perception,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a senior analyst at Ukrainian charitable foundation Come Back Alive.

Ukrainian sea drones hit and disabled a tanker involved in trading Russian oil as it sailed through the Black sea in Ukraine’s exclusive economic zone on its way to the Russian port of Novorossiysk, a Ukrainian official reported yesterday.

This marks the third sea drone strike in two weeks on vessels suspected to be part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” – unregulated ships used to help Moscow avoid sanctions, export its oil and fund Putin’s war.

Ukraine has launched a major aerial attack on Russia overnight, with at least 287 drones downed over a number of regions, Russian officials said.

Russia’s defence ministry said at least 40 drones were shot down over the Moscow region, which along with the city itself has a population of more than 22 million.

The extent of the damage was not immediately clear but flights were diverted from all of Moscow’s main airports.

Russian officials do not disclose the total number of drones that target the country and only share the number of drones downed.

The attack comes just hours after Ukrainian sea drones hit and disabled a tanker involved in trading Russian oil as it sailed through Ukraine’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea to the Russian port of Novorossiysk, a Ukrainian official said.

Donald Trump’s plan for peace in Ukraine includes proposals to restore Russian energy flows to Europe, major US investment in Russian rare earths and energy, and tapping frozen Russian sovereign assets, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The plans were detailed in appendices to peace proposals handed to European counterparts over recent weeks, the WSJ reported.

Trump’s peace pitch includes a plan for US financial firms and other businesses to tap $200bn of frozen Russian sovereign assets for projects in Ukraine, including a major new data center powered by the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant now controlled by Russian forces, the paper said.

He has also offered that US companies would invest in Russian strategic sectors such as rare-earth extraction and oil drilling in the Arctic, while Russian energy flows to Western Europe and the world would be restored, it added.

The paper said one unidentified European official compared the proposed US-Russian energy deals to an economic version of the 1945 Yalta conference.