U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin, who claimed a key Ukrainian city had fallen to Russia on the eve of Tuesday’s talks about a potential peace plan to end his war.

Putin said Russian troops had taken the city of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region in a video announcement posted late Monday by the Kremlin, an advance that would be Russia’s most significant on the battlefield in nearly two years. Ukraine’s Military Staff spokesman Bohdan Senyk denied its forces had lost the city in a message early Tuesday.

Bloomberg isn’t able to independently verify the claims of either side.

Putin will meet with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, for talks starting after 5 p.m. in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, according to the state-run Tass news service. They’re set to discuss the latest proposals for ending Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine following negotiations between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in Florida.

Amid fears in Europe that the plan risks rewarding Russian aggression by forcing Kyiv into a deal, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the latest version “looks better” during a visit to Paris on Monday to meet with French counterpart Emmanuel Macron. Zelenskyy, who also spoke with Witkoff in Paris, traveled to Ireland on Tuesday where he met with his negotiating team for a “detailed briefing” on the Florida talks.

“We are committed to achieving a real peace and guaranteed security,” Zelenskyy said in a post on social media. “This is exactly the level of commitment that must be compelled from the Russian side, and this task can be accomplished only together with our partners.”

Putin has signaled an openness to talks, saying last week that Trump’s proposals for ending the war could be “the basis for future agreements,” while adding that no final version exists yet. Still, he’s given no sign that he’s ready to roll back Russian demands.

Witkoff, who’s meeting Putin in Russia for the sixth time this year, promoted the original 28-point plan that emerged last month and was drawn up with Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev. Those proposals horrified officials in Ukraine and Europe by outlining Russian demands for concessions that Kyiv has repeatedly rejected.

An Oct. 14 phone call between Witkoff and Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov showed that the U.S. envoy suggested they work together on a plan to end the war in Ukraine modeled on Trump’s Gaza peace deal, according to a recording of the conversation reviewed and transcribed by Bloomberg. Ushakov and Dmitriev also discussed the plans in an Oct. 29 phone call.

The seizure of Pokrovsk, a defensive hub that’s been the focus of intense fighting for more than a year, would potentially open up the path for Russia to threaten the larger cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. It would offer Moscow a symbolic victory as Putin continues to insist that Ukraine must surrender the entire Donetsk region under a deal to end the war.

Putin claimed in October that his military had encircled Ukrainian troops in Pokrovsk. That was rejected by Ukraine, though it acknowledged Russian soldiers had entered the city.

Russia’s forces are spreading through Pokrovsk, particularly in central and northern areas, in an attempt to seize the city, the DeepState mapping service that cooperates with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said late Monday.

Trump has urged Russia and Ukraine to halt fighting along existing battle lines as part of the peace initiative. After meeting with Putin in Alaska in August, Trump abandoned plans in October for a second summit in Budapest when the U.S. concluded that Moscow wasn’t ready for substantive changes to its maximalist demands for ending the war.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly said he’ll agree to a ceasefire.

Russia first attempted to occupy Pokrovsk, a former mining hub that’s now almost totally destroyed, in July 2024. A surprise Ukrainian counteroffensive into Russia’s Kursk region the following month helped relieve the pressure as Moscow diverted forces to confront the incursion.

After Russia drove Ukrainian troops out of Kursk, with help from North Korean soldiers sent by Kim Jong Un to support Putin, Moscow renewed strikes on Pokrovsk during the summer.

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—With assistance from Maxim Edwards, Daryna Krasnolutska and Volodymyr Verbianyi.

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