Ukraine war latest: Trump envoy suggests dividing up Ukraine like post-war Berlin

Shortly after dining with a Russian negotiator in Washington last week, Donald Trump’s envoy to Moscow is reported to have told the US president that the quickest way to end the war would be to support a strategy handing Vladimir Putin the four Ukrainian regions he sought to illegally annex seven months into his full-scale invasion.

Steve Witkoff, a former real estate mogul, who met with Mr Putin on Friday, was said to have made the remarks by two US officials and five people familiar with the situation, Reuters reported. Mr Witkoff has previously been unable to name all four regions to which he referred.

However, Mr Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg is claimed by two sources to have pushed back against Mr Witkoff, saying that Ukraine would never agree to completely hand over all four territories to Russia.

The meeting is reported to have ended without Mr Trump making a decision to change Washington’s strategy.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan have discussed efforts to secure a ceasefire in the Ukraine war, a Turkish diplomatic source has told Reuters.

The pair also discussed energy cooperation issues and bilateral relations during a meeting on the sidelines of the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in southern Turkey, the source said.

Russia’s defence ministry has claimed that Ukraine had carried out five attacks on Russian energy infrastructure over the past day, in an alleged violation of a US-brokered moratorium on such strikes.

Ukraine and Russia agreed to pause strikes on each other’s energy facilities last month, but both sides have repeatedly accused each other of breaking the moratorium.

It was not possible to verify Russia’s claims, and Moscow has repeatedly made false claims about Ukrainian attacks since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Our associate editor Sean O’Grady writes:

There’s a terrible sense of poignancy – if not doom – around all the meetings of the “coalition of the willing”, impressive as the grandiloquent words, the formidable roll call of nations and the glittering array of military uniforms might be.

To be brutally frank, and with the best will in the world, these capable, dedicated ministers and generals may be wasting their time.

The problem is American resistance to the whole idea. The danger is that if Vladimir Putin doesn’t like the COTW reassurance force – and everything suggests that he hates it – and obstructs Donald Trump’s peace deal, then Trump will agree.

The best Putin will accept so far is a conventional UN peacekeeping force, ie the kind of thing that so recently proved useless and was humiliated by Israel in Lebanon. No Nato members, under any flag, will be allowed in. If nothing is agreed, Putin will carry on, likely with Trump’s acquiescence – because it seems to me that Trump is basically a coward.

Ukraine can nearly supply its armed forces with the full range of military equipment if requires, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

In remarks reported by the Kyiv Independent, Oleksandr Kamyshin told a briefing marking Ukraine’s Gunsmith Day, in which it was said that Ukraine had developed a total of 324 types of weapons domestically between 2022 and 2024: “Today, according to various estimates, 30 per cent to 40 per cent of what our troops use on the front lines is made in Ukraine.

“It’s not only about war — it’s about our economy. As of last year, defence manufacturing made up a significant share of our GDP. After our victory, I’m confident we’ll be exporting Ukrainian-made weapons to the world.”

Kyiv’s domestic production of cruise missiles has increased eightfold in 2024, Ukraine’s strategic industries minister has said.

According to the Kyiv Independent, Herman Smetanin said Ukraine had only able to manufacture a single type of cruise missile, the Neptune, back in 2022. “Last year, we introduced many new models, allowing us to grow production eightfold compared to 2023,” he said. A total of 324 new types of weapons had been developed in Ukraine by the end of 2024.

Ukraine also more than doubled its production of long-range drones in 2024 compared to the previous year, which marks a 22-fold increase compared to 2022.

In total, Ukraine produced $9bn worth of arms in 2024, and the defence industry is on track to nearly quadruple that amount by the end of 2025, said Mr Smetanin. “By the end of 2025, we will have the capacity to produce $35bn worth of military equipment domestically.”

Ukraine’s military has reported nearly 150 clashes along the frontline on Friday, as it claimed that Russia had carried out more than 100 air strikes in multiple regions and suffered 1,240 casualties.

The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said Russia had fired more than 6,400 artillery shells and deployed 2,789 kamikaze drones over the same period.

Romanian hard-right opposition leader George Simion, who is the favourite to win a presidential election re-run, has claimed he is the only candidate who could stop a potential withdrawal of US troops from the country.

Romania will repeat the two-round election on 4 and 18 May after the Constitutional Court voided the initial ballot in December over accusations of Russian interference, which Moscow denied.

There are wider concerns in Romania over a potential cut in US troop numbers in Europe and the future of Nato, amid reports that Washington is drawing up plans to cut troops in eastern Europe.

“No longer having American troops in Romania seems dangerous to me and I am the only candidate who can stop that,” said Mr Simion, leader of the opposition Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), during a marathon news conference late on Friday which lasted more than five hours.

“We are the natural allies, we are ideologically aligned with the Republican Party, the Maga movement.”

A critic of the current European Union leadership, Mr Simion has also said he would stop military aid to Ukraine, which borders Romania. He has opposed Holocaust education and gay marriage. On Friday, he said he backed increasing defence spending provided it boosted Romanian industry.

Ukraine could be partitioned like Berlin after the Second World War as part of a peace deal, US president Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia has suggested.

Retired lieutenant general Keith Kellogg said in an interview with The Times that UK and French troops could adopt zones of control in the west of the country, forming a “reassurance force”.

Russia’s army could remain in the occupied east, and between the two would be Ukrainian forces and a demilitarised zone, said Gen Kellogg, who was previously national security adviser to vice-president Mike Pence.