Vladimir Putin poses with Donald Trump’s envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, St. Petersburg, Russia, April 11, 2025

Friday’s Coverage: Europe Gathers to Support Kyiv

UPDATE 1658 GMT:

More than 100 Chinese nationals are fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine, say two US officials familiar with intelligence reports and a former Western intelligence official”.

The sources said the men have deployed as mercenaries and do not appear to have direct ties to China’s authorities.

The US officials said the fighters are poorly trained and having little impact on the battlefield.

While the sources said there is no evidence of official sanction for the deployment, the former intelligence official said Chinese military officers have been present behind Russian lines to observe and draw tactical lessons from the invasion.

UPDATE 0628 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has noted the Kremlin’s dismissal of Ukraine-US proposals to end Moscow’s 37 1/2-month invasion.

The Kremlin nominally accepted the proposal to halt attacks on energy infrastructure, but has continued nightly missile and drone strikes. Vladimir Putin rejected the Ukraine-US agreement to stop assaults in and from the Black Sea, demanding the lifting of American sanctions on Moscow.

Zelensky again emphasized the necessity of bolstered air defenses, asking the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Friday for another 10 Patriot anti-missile systems.

“What is needed now are political decisions to make them work for peace. We need that result,” Zelensky said.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Donald Trump’s envoy, real estate developer Steve Witkoff, has proposed to Trump that Ukraine give all of four regions — Donetsk and Luhansk in the east and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south — to Russia, say two US officials and five other sources.

Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg for more than four hours on Friday. No details were given of the discussion, with the Kremlin saying only, “The theme of the meeting: aspects of a Ukrainian settlement.”

But Reuters’ sources said Witkoff put his proposal to Trump last week, after meeting Putin’s senior financial and investment advisor Kirill Dmitriev in Washington. Before seeing Trump, Witkoff broke with normal security procedures by hosting Dmitriev in his personal residence for dinner.

The developer said to Trump that the fastest way to an end of Russia’s 37 1/2-month invasion was to hand over the regions that Putin tried to annex illegally in September 2022.

Russia occupied the Crimea peninsula in 2014 and has seized almost all of the Luhansk region. But Ukraine holds parts of the other three regions, including key cities, having reclaimed territory in a counter-offensive in autumn 2022.

Before meeting Putin on Friday, Witkoff conferred again with Dmitriev in St Petersburg. Russian State TV featured Dmitriev, who has been in contract with the Trump camp since at least January 2017, leaving a hotel with the envoy.

Dmitriev said the talks were “productive”.

Witkoff’s proposal bolsters the position of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who said on Thursday that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky will have to accept territorial concessions.

Lavrov proclaimed that it is “impossible” for Ukraine to return to its 1991 internationally-recognized borders.

Split Among Trump Advisors

The Reuters sources said Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, pushed back Witkoff in the White House meeting. He said Kyiv, though willing to negotiate some terms over Russian-occupied land, would never agree to Moscow’s total ownership of the regions.

The meeting ended without Trump making a decision to change American strategy.

Kellogg said Friday that a settlement could parallel the status of Germany during the Cold War. Russia’s current occupation of areas would be accepted in the short term, but the rest of Ukraine would be supported by a “reassurance force” including UK and French troops.

There would be an 18-mile demilitarized zone in eastern Ukraine along the current frontline.

“You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War 2, when you had a Russian zone, a French zone and a British zone,” he said.

Kellogg later clarified on social media:

“Antagonistic” US-Ukraine Meeting Over Rare Earth Minerals

A meeting on Friday between US and Ukrainian officials made no progress on the Trump Administration’s demand for control of Ukrainian rare earth minerals.

A “source with knowledge of the meeting” said the discussion was “very antagonistic” because of the Administration’s “maximalist” draft proposal.

A Treasury Department spokesperson confirmed the discussions, but said only that they were “technical in nature”.

At the end of February, Ukraine and the US were on the verge of an agreement for joint control of the minerals, with 50% of the profits going to Ukrainian recovery and reconstruction. However, the signature ceremony was cancelled when Vice President J.D. Vance and Trump ambushed Zelensky in a White House press appearance.

A “source close to the talks” said that Trump officials are also demanding control of the natural gas pipeline from the town of Sudzha in western Russia to the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, about 750 miles away on the border with Slovakia.

Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist with Kyiv’s Center for Economic Strategy said the Trump camp is out for “all they can get”. He assessed that the bullying “colonial-type” demands had little chance of being accepted by the Zelensky Government.