Ukraine-Russia war live: Trump envoy rejects Starmer peace plan as ‘posture and pose’ ahead of Saudi talks

Keir Starmer hailed his “good relationship” with Donald Trump just hours before the US President’s special envoy slammed the PM’s Ukraine peace plan as "a posture and a pose".

Steve Witkoff said the Labour leader’s idea of a peacekeeping force made up of the ‘coalition of the willing’ was based on a "simplistic" notion of thinking "we have all got to be like Winston Churchill".

In an interview with the pro-Trump personality Tucker Carlson, Mr Witkoff also praised Vladimir Putin, saying that he "liked" the Russian president. "I don't regard Putin as a bad guy. He's super smart," he said.

Mr Witkoff is leading the US ceasefire negotiations with Russia and Ukraine.

A US delegation will seek progress toward a Black Sea ceasefire and a broader cessation of violence in the war in Ukraine when it meets for talks with Russian officials today, held after separate discussions with diplomats from Ukraine.

A source briefed on the planning for the talks said the US side was being led by Andrew Peek, a senior director at the White House National Security Council, and Michael Anton, a senior State Department official.

They met the Ukrainians last night and plan to sit down with the Russians this morning.

The White House says the aim of the talks is to reach a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, allowing the free flow of shipping

The Russian and US delegations plan to begin their talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia at 7am GMT (10am Moscow time), the Russian state news TASS agency reported, citing an unnamed source.

The ceasefire negotiations will be held on the same day as separate talks take place between the US and Ukrainian officials, also in Saudi Arabia.

On the eve of the talks, US special envoy Steve Witkoff expressed optimism about the chances for ending Europe's deadliest conflict since the Second World War.

The fate of currently Russia-occupied Ukrainian territory will be one of the key areas of discussion at the talks in Saudi Arabia today.

Russian forces have illegally occupied one-fifth of Ukraine since they launched the full-scale military invasion over three years ago.

Trump's national security adviser Mike Waltz was asked yesterday if the US would accept a peace deal in which Russia was allowed to keep Ukrainian territory.

He replied: "We have to ask ourselves, is it in our national interest? Is it realistic?... Are we going to drive every Russian off of every inch of Ukrainian soil?"

Ukraine says it already recognises that it cannot recapture some occupied Ukrainian territory by force and that it will have to be returned diplomatically over time.

Kyiv says, however, that it will never recognise Russian sovereignty over Ukrainian territory.

US officials are due to meet negotiators from Ukraine and from Russia in Saudi Arabia today to discuss the details of a proposed 30-day ceasefire on strikes on energy infrastructure, as well as a longer-term peace deal.

The halt on infrastructure attacks was loosely agreed in talks between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump last week, with a 30-day timeline.

But that narrowly defined ceasefire was quickly cast into doubt, with Moscow saying Ukraine hit an oil depot in southern Russia while Kyiv said Russia had struck hospitals and homes, and knocked out power to some railways.

Last week Mr Zelensky said Kyiv would draw up a list of facilities that could be subject to the partial ceasefire. That list could include not only energy, but also rail and port infrastructure, he said.

A moratorium on energy infrastructure strikes could favour Moscow more than Kyiv, given it would prevent Ukraine from conducting long-range strikes on Russian oil facilities, a key way that it has inflicted pain on its enemy.

The electronic hum in the sky above told him that the Russians were on a hunting safari and that he was the prey. Leaping from his bicycle, Oleksandr left its wheels spinning as he bolted through a hole in a fence hoping to find cover.

Horrified to discover he was still in the open air, he threw himself against the fence, hoping to blend in, to somehow hide. The drone tracked sideways, hung above him, and dropped its bomb.

The explosion tore a chunk of his leg away.

Ukrainians living in bombed-out Kherson tell world affairs editor Sam Kiley how Russian drones target them as they go about their daily lives – and how their brutal injuries are cared for in a hospital forced underground:

Russia's air defence units intercepted and destroyed 28 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Russian defence ministry said this morning.

Of these, 12 drones were downed each over the border Kursk region and the southern Russia Rostov region, the ministry said on its Telegram channel.

The remaining four were destroyed over Crimea, the Krasnodar region and the waters of the Sea of Azov, the ministry added.

A US delegation is set to hold another round of ceasefire talks today in Saudi Arabia, as officials from the Trump administration meet separately with both Ukrainian and Russian representatives in their bid to end the war in Ukraine.

"I think that you're going to see in Saudi Arabia on Monday some real progress, particularly as it affects a Black Sea ceasefire on ships between both countries. And from that, you'll naturally gravitate into a full-on shooting ceasefire,” the US special envoy Steve Witkoff said.

White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said the United States was talking through a range of confidence-building measures aimed at ending the war, including on the future of Ukrainian children taken into Russia.

Asked about the goals for the broader negotiations, Mr Waltz said that after a Black Sea ceasefire was agreed "we'll talk the line of control, which is the actual front lines".

"And that gets into the details of verification mechanisms, peacekeeping, freezing the lines where they are," he said. "And then of course, the broader and permanent peace."

Donald Trump has floated the idea of taking control of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, in a phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

The conversation on Wednesday was described as positive by both sides and was mainly aimed at securing a truce between Ukraine and Russia on aerial attacks against one another’s energy infrastructure.

Mr Zelensky suggested the call had focused on the US takeover of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is under Russian control.

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Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have both insisted that Ukraine’s forces in Kursk are surrounded by Russian troops and are in imminent danger, but U.S. intelligence reports have contradicted those claims.

A trio of U.S. and European officials familiar with intelligence details of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine told Reuters that the situation on the ground does not reflect the comments made by Trump and Putin.

One of the U.S. officials also said that the White House was briefed on the actual situation in Ukraine, so it’a unclear why Trump has and continues to claim that Ukrainian troops in Russia's Kursk region are surrounded.

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