White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced between 6:47 PM and 7:16 PM UTC on Dec. 11 that the United States will send a delegation to Paris on Saturday for talks with national security advisers from Ukraine, France, Germany, and the U.K. on President Donald Trump's Ukraine peace plan only if he deems it advances progress. Leavitt told reporters, "It is still up in the air if we feel we can move the ball forward. The president is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war and he is sick of meetings just for the sake of meeting. He doesnt want anymore talk. He wants action and he wants this war to end," according to Axios reporter Barak Ravid citing an Axios article published in the same 29-minute window. The Paris discussions focus on Trump's peace plan, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed earlier on Dec. 11 caps Ukraine's army at 800,000 personnel with a target for full agreement by Christmas, as reported in prior Financial Times coverage. Separately, in the reporting window, posts on X cited The Times reporting internal Russian documents projecting 70,000 soldier desertions in 2025, six times more than in January 2024, with a Russian soldier named Nikolai expressing remorse over his involvement in the conflict.
