Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russian general killed in Moscow car bomb while Trump envoy meets Putin for talks

As US proposals lay out Washington’s vision for peace in Ukraine, comments have emerged from Donald Trump about the fate of the Crimean peninsula.

“Crimea will stay with Russia,” he told Time in an interview marking his first 100 days in power.

He also blamed Kyiv for starting the war, saying:“I think what caused the war to start was when they started talking about joining NATO.”

The US proposals for peace in Ukraine stipulate that Washington will legally recognise Crimea as under Russian control – a topic which last week provoked a war of words between Mr Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, who reiterated that it was Ukrainian territory.

Donald Trump’s envoy has met with Vladimir Putin on Friday, at what Trump has said is a key moment in diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine.

Mr Witkoff has emerged as Washington’s key interlocutor with Mr Putin as the US president pushes for a deal to end the war, and has already held three long meetings with the Kremlin leader.

Video published by the Kremlin showed Mr Witkoff and Mr Putin shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries before sitting down on opposite sides of a white oval table.

Mr Putin was accompanied by his foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov and investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

The Independent’s Whitehall editor Kate Devlin writes:

No 10 has insisted that Keir Starmer believes it is “for Ukraine” to decide to give up territory in a bid to end the war with Russia.

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, has said Ukraine may have to give up land, amid growing pressure from President Donald Trump to accept territorial concessions.

Downing Street also said that all options remain “on the table” when it comes to potential peacekeeping support for Ukraine after any ceasefire.

Asked whether troops would only be deployed if the US offered a “backstop” to a peace deal, the PM’s spokesman said he would not give a running commentary on talks, but added: “As the Prime Minister has said in recent days, we’re working closely with the US. We’re all focused on ending the bloodshed and securing a lasting peace for Ukraine.”

Yaroslav Moskalik was killed in a car bombing near eastern Moscow, Russian authorities have announced.

But who was the senior ranking military officer?

Mr Moskalik, who held the rank of major general, had participated in several high-level Russian delegations, according to defence ministry bulletins and media reports.

He joined the Russian contingent in a meeting in October 2015 of the Normandy Format, a group made up of teams from Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France who oversaw the Minsk agreements designed to end the war between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatist forces that broke out in 2014.

Moskalik represented the army’s General Staff at the negotiations alongside Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov, according to the Kremlin website.

Russia’s RBC newspaper listed Moskalik as a participant in the security subgroup in the Minsk talks.

Ukrainian air defences shot down 41 out of 103 Shahed-type drones and other drones launched by Russia overnight, the air force said.

Forty drones disappeared from radars without causing damage, the statement said according to The Kyiv Independent.

Drones which disappear from radars are often decoys, which Russia launches alongside real drones to confuse and overwhelm Ukraine’s air defenses.

A senior Russian military officer was killed in a car bombing near Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.

It named the officer as Yaroslav Moskalik, deputy head of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, and said it had opened a criminal case into the incident.

“According to available data, the explosion occurred as a result of the detonation of a homemade explosive device filled with destructive elements,” the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The statement did not say who might be behind the incident. Several high-ranking Russian military figures have been assassinated since the start of the war in Ukraine in operations blamed by Moscow on Kyiv.

The Independent’s world affairs editor Sam Kiley writes:

Crimea is footnoted in British history for the Earl of Cardigan and his disastrous leading of the Charge of the Light Brigade. To Vladimir Putin it’s where history itself must turn.

Donald Trump, taking an 18th-century might-is-right approach, has said that the peninsula was captured without a fight by Russia from Ukraine in 2014 and therefore should stay in Putin’s fist.

Of all the 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory taken after Russia invaded Crimea 11 years ago and launched its wider Anschluss in 2022, Crimea is the greatest Russian prize.

Whoever controls Sevastopol is likely to dominate the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Outside of Tartus, in Syria, which Russia lost recently, it is – or was – Russia’s only warm-weather port.