Washington / Moscow, December 7,2025: The United States’ outgoing Ukraine envoy has said a potential agreement to end the Ukraine war is “really close,” with only two major issues left unresolved. However, the Kremlin cautioned on Sunday that Washington must make “radical changes” to its proposals before any deal can move forward.
US Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg — set to leave office in January — told the Reagan National Defense Forum in California that negotiations had reached the “last 10 metres,” traditionally the most difficult phase of any peace process.
Kellogg said the remaining disputes centred on the future status of the Donbas region and Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, currently under Russian control.
“If we get those two issues settled, I think the rest of the things will work out fairly well,” Kellogg said. “We’re almost there.”
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, following eight years of conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists in Donbas. Moscow now claims the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions, though Ukraine still controls around 5,000 square kilometres.
After four hours of talks in Moscow last week between President Vladimir Putin, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said “territorial problems” were discussed — shorthand for Russia’s demands regarding Donbas.
Ushakov said on Sunday that Washington must make “serious, I would say, radical changes to their papers” on a possible settlement, without elaborating on what revisions were needed.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly ruled out handing over the remaining parts of Donetsk without a referendum, warning that such a move would allow Russia to use the region as a launchpad for future assaults deeper into Ukraine.
Zelensky said on Saturday he had a “long and substantive” phone call with Witkoff and Kushner. The Kremlin has signalled that Kushner is expected to lead the drafting of a potential peace framework.
Kellogg described the scale of casualties on both sides as “horrific,” saying Russia and Ukraine had together suffered more than two million dead and wounded since 2022. Neither country publicly releases credible casualty figures.
Russia currently controls around 19.2% of Ukraine, including Crimea, all of Luhansk, over 80% of Donetsk, most of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and smaller areas of Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk.
Last month, a leaked set of 28 draft US peace proposals alarmed Ukrainian and European officials, who said the documents appeared to concede to several of Moscow’s demands — including limits on Ukraine’s military, recognition of Russian territorial control, and restrictions on NATO cooperation.
US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly called himself a “peacemaker,” has made ending the war a top foreign policy priority, though it remains one of the most challenging goals of his presidency.
