Ukraine peace deal is really close, U.S. envoy Kellogg says

U.S. President Donald Trump's outgoing Ukraine envoy said a woody to extremity the Ukraine warfare was "really close" and present depended connected resolving 2 main outstanding issues: the aboriginal of Ukraine's Donbas portion and the Zaporizhzhia atomic powerfulness plant.

Russia invaded Ukraine successful February 2022 aft 8 years of warring betwixt Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian troops successful the Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Ukraine warfare is the deadliest European struggle since World War Two and has triggered the biggest confrontation betwixt Russia and the West since the depths of the Cold War.

U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, who is due to measurement down successful January, told the Reagan National Defense Forum that efforts to resoluteness the struggle were successful "the past 10 metres" which helium said was ever the hardest.

The 2 main outstanding issues, Kellogg said, were connected territory — chiefly the aboriginal of the Donbas — and the aboriginal of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia atomic powerfulness plant, Europe's largest, which is nether Russian control.

"If we get those 2 issues settled, I deliberation the remainder of the things volition enactment retired reasonably well," Kellogg said connected Saturday astatine the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum successful Simi Valley, California. "We're astir there."

"We're really, truly close," said Kellogg.

Kellogg, a retired lieutenant wide who served successful Vietnam, Panama and Iraq, said the standard of the decease and injuries caused by the Ukraine warfare was "horrific" and unprecedented successful presumption of a determination war.

Kellogg said that, together, Russia and Ukraine person suffered much than 2 cardinal casualties, including dormant and wounded since the warfare began. Neither Russia nor Ukraine disclose credible estimates of their losses.

Moscow says Western and Ukrainian estimates inflate its losses. Kyiv says Moscow inflates estimates of Ukrainian losses.

Russia presently controls 19.2% of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed successful 2014, each of Luhansk, much than 80% of Donetsk, astir 75% of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

A leaked acceptable of 28 U.S. draught bid proposals, opens caller tab emerged past month, alarming Ukrainian and European officials who said it bowed to Moscow's main demands connected NATO, Russian power of a 5th of Ukraine and restrictions connected Ukraine's army.

Those proposals, which Russia present says incorporate 27 points, person been divided up into 4 antithetic components, according to the Kremlin. The nonstop contents are not successful the nationalist domain.

Under the archetypal U.S. proposals, the Zaporizhzhia atomic plant, whose reactors are presently successful acold shutdown, would beryllium relaunched nether the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the energy produced would beryllium distributed arsenic betwixt Russia and Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said connected Saturday that helium had had a long and "substantive" phone telephone with Trump's peculiar envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The Kremlin said connected Friday it expected Kushner to beryllium doing the main enactment on drafting a imaginable deal.