Russia rules out big concessions on Ukraine as leak shows Witkoff advised Moscow

MOSCOW: Russia will make no big concessions on a peace plan for Ukraine, a senior Russian diplomat said on Wednesday, after a leaked recording of a call involving US envoy Steve Witkoff showed he had advised Moscow on how to pitch to Donald Trump.

Witkoff is expected to travel to Moscow next week with other senior US officials for talks with Russian leaders about a possible plan to end the nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday he was ready to advance the US-backed framework for ending the war and to discuss disputed points with the US president in talks that he said should include European allies.

Kyiv and its European allies are worried that details of the plan leaked last week show it bows to key Russian demands - barring Ukraine’s NATO entry, enshrining Russian control of a fifth of Ukraine and limiting the size of Ukraine’s army.

Trump later said progress was being made and Moscow was making concessions even though the war - in which Russian forces have been advancing - was only going to move “in one direction”.

But, while welcoming the Trump administration’s efforts, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday: “There can be no question of any concessions, or any surrender of our approaches to those key points.”

Moscow also raised concerns about the leak to Bloomberg News of the transcript of a call between Witkoff and Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov in which the US envoy advised Ushakov on how to pitch a peace plan to Trump.

Trump, on Air Force One, brushed aside a question from a reporter about why Witkoff appeared to be coaching Russian officials as simply “what a dealmaker does” and “a very standard form of negotiation”.

But Russia said the leak was an unacceptable attempt to undermine peace efforts and amounted to hybrid warfare.