Trump's deadline for Ukraine: President Donald Trump is apparently pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sign a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, drafted up by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, by American Thanksgiving—aka six days from now.
The draft plan kind of sucks for Ukraine. It would force Zelenskyy to massively reduce the size of Ukraine's military—from around 800,000 to 600,000—and even turn over territory to Russia that hasn't yet been conquered, which has historically been a sticking point for the Ukrainian delegation. It's a bright red line of something they don't do. "Russia would receive 'de facto recognition' of its control of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as of the areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia it has illegally seized, with the conflict in these regions frozen on the current front line," reports The Washington Post. And while "the draft rules out Ukraine's membership of the Nato military alliance, it keeps the door open for its membership of the European Union," notes the BBC.
