BBC: Russia, the US and Ukraine agree that a deal on ending almost four years of full-scale war is edging closer but, in the words of President Donald Trump, “one or two very thorny, very tough issues” remain.
Two of the trickiest issues in Washington’s 20-point plan involve territory and the fate of Europe’s biggest nuclear plant, which is currently occupied by Russia.
The Kremlin agrees with Trump that negotiations are “at a final stage”, and Zelensky’s next step is to meet European leaders in France on 6 January, but any one of the sticking points could jeopardise a deal.
Vladimir Putin has not budged from his maximalist demand for the whole of Ukraine’s industrial Donbas, although Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has offered a compromise.
Russian forces occupy most of the Luhansk region in the east but little more than 75% of Donetsk, and Putin wants it all, including the remaining “fortress belt” cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
“We can’t just withdraw, it’s out of our law,” says Zelensky. “It’s not only the law. People live there, 300,000 people… We can’t lose those people.”
He has proposed Ukrainian forces pull back from the area to create a demilitarised or free economic zone policed by Ukraine, if the Russians pull back the same distance too. The current line of contact would then be policed by international forces.
It is difficult to imagine Putin agreeing to any of that, and Russia’s generals have told him they are capturing Ukrainian territory fast.
