From: Transform Ukraine By Douglas Landro / December 2, 2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin personally declared victory in Pokrovsk despite Ukrainian forces still fighting in the city—elevating false battlefield claims to presidential propaganda just as American envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow for negotiations, revealing the Kremlin’s strategy of manufacturing momentum to strengthen its negotiating position.
The Day’s Reckoning
War Day 1377 arrived with a peculiar clarity: everyone knew what would happen next, yet the performance continued anyway.
In Florida, American envoys pressed Ukrainian officials for the second consecutive day on concessions Moscow would reject within twenty-four hours. In Vilnius, Russian-launched balloons shut down the airport again—the fourteenth closure in two months, proving NATO membership provided less protection than geography suggested. In Pokrovsk, Ukrainian forces killed Russians in a city their president had just declared captured. In Moscow, the Kremlin prepared talking points for meetings it had already decided would fail.
The gap between diplomatic theater and battlefield reality had grown so wide that even pro-Kremlin military bloggers publicly called out their own defense ministry for lying. Putin himself announced victories that hadn’t occurred. Dutch ministers signed contracts for Ukrainian drone production while American negotiators crafted proposals for Ukrainian territorial concessions. Balloons drifted across NATO airspace. Children remained in Russian custody. Corruption scandals touched the president’s former business partners.
This was the day before the meeting—when everyone involved understood the script but pretended improvisation might change the ending. Witkoff would fly to Moscow. Putin would say no quietly. Washington would blame Kyiv loudly. European governments would commit more resources while questioning whether commitment mattered. Ukrainian forces would keep fighting in cities Russia claimed to control.
The only question was whether anyone still believed the performance, or whether the audience had learned to watch for what happened offstage while the actors delivered their lines.
The Diplomatic Theater
The script had been written before the actors took the stage.
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff met with Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov in Florida for the second consecutive day, ostensibly finalizing details of a peace proposal before presenting it to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The proposal—originally drafted in close collaboration with the Kremlin—had been revised after Ukrainian and European objections, though how substantially remained unclear. What was clear: Putin would meet with Witkoff in Moscow on December 2, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov had already announced Russia would not discuss the meeting’s outcomes publicly, and this silence would allow Moscow to reject American terms while blaming Ukraine for the diplomatic impasse.
Voice of Ukraine 