Charles Mains

Witkoff seeks approval for a draft peace plan that initially offered terms favorable to Moscow, but has since been fine-tuned with input from Europe and Ukraine.

Senior Russian officials have warned those amendments could make the plan a non-starter.

Witkoff's trip also comes in the wake of a leaked transcript from a phone call with a senior Putin aide that appears to show Witkoff providing counsel on handling Trump.

While the transcript has not been independently verified by NPR, Trump is already downplaying its contents, telling reporters Witkoff was engaged in a standard form of negotiation.

Charles Baines, NPR News, Moscow.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia welcomed the initial version of a U.S.

peace plan for Ukraine.

One critic said it was heavily tilted in Russia's favor, but that Lavrov claimed mirrored consensus that came out of the Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska.

Lavrov said Moscow is still waiting to hear about a newly amended version of the U.S.

plan, now with input from Ukraine and European powers.

Lavrov's comments came as Russian and American representatives are set to gather in the United Arab Emirates to discuss those very changes.

Meanwhile, fighting has continued alongside the diplomacy, with heavy Russian attacks overnight on the Ukrainian capital Kiev and Ukrainian drones striking border regions of Russia.

Charles Mainz, NPR News, Moscow.

The new sanctions take aim at Rosneft and Lukoil, two oil majors that make up nearly half of all Russian oil exports.

Yet reacting to the move, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova insisted Russia's economy had developed a strong immunity to years of Western sanctions and called the policy counterproductive to Trump's efforts to negotiate peace in Ukraine.

Others were less diplomatic.

Former President Dmitry Medvedev, who now sits on Russia's Security Council, said the move amounted to an act of war against Russia.

Trump announced the sanctions earlier this week, linking the move to Russian President Vladimir Putin's failure to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine in good faith.

Charles Mainz, NPR News, Moscow.

Russian authorities say air defenses downed more than 60 Ukrainian drones on approach to Moscow, forcing the temporary closure of two of the capital's main airports. The Ukrainian attacks followed Russia's deadly bombardment of Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, Saturday that also injured scores of people.