Says US envoy; Moscow wants radical changes

US President Donald Trump's outgoing Ukraine envoy said a deal to end the Ukraine war was "really close" and depended on resolving just two major issues but the Kremlin said there had to be radical changes to some of the US proposals.

Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a "peacemaker" president, says that ending Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two has so far been the most elusive foreign policy aim of his presidency.

US Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, who is due to step down in January, told the Reagan National Defense Forum that efforts to resolve the conflict were in "the last 10 metres" which he said was always the hardest.

The two main outstanding issues, Kellogg said, were on territory - primarily the future of the Donbas - and the future of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, which is under Russian control.

"If we get those two issues settled, I think the rest of the things will work out fairly well," Kellogg said on Saturday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley, California. "We're almost there."

"We're really, really close," said Kellogg.  Zelensky said on Saturday that he had had a long and "substantive" phone call with Witkoff and Kushner. The Kremlin has said it expects Kushner to be doing the main work on drafting a possible deal.

Meanwhile, Russia's air defences destroyed 77 Ukrainian drones launched overnight, Russia's defence ministry said yesterday.