By ILLIA NOVIKOV and AAMER MADHANI

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The U.S. and Russia have drawn up a plan aimed at ending the war in Ukraine that calls for major concessions from Kyiv, according to a person familiar with the matter, including granting some demands the Kremlin has made repeatedly since the full-scale invasion began nearly four years ago.

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It was not clear what, if any, concessions the proposal asks of Russia. The same person confirmed that promises from Moscow of no further attacks are part of the framework.

As reports of the plan emerged, blindsided European diplomats insisted they and Ukraine must be consulted.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff has been quietly working on the plan for a month, receiving input from both Ukrainians and Russians on terms that are acceptable to each side, according to a senior U.S. official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

U.S. President Donald Trump, the official added, has been briefed on the plan and supports it.

The talk of a secret peace plan piled more pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is marshaling his country’s defenses against Russia’s bigger army, visiting European leaders to ensure they continue their support for Ukraine and navigating a major corruption scandal that has caused public outrage.

Several high-ranking Army officials, including Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, were in Kyiv on Thursday to give a new push to peace efforts and assess the reality on the ground in Ukraine, U.S. officials said.

Zelenskyy’s office said in a statement that he formally received the peace plan Thursday from American officials. The statement said Zelenskyy expected to talk to Trump in coming days about diplomatic opportunities and what was needed for peace.

Zelenskyy underlined Ukraine’s main conditions for peace and promised to work on the conclusions reached in the meetings with U.S. officials, the statement said.

European leaders have already been alarmed this year by indications that Trump’s administration might be sidelining them and Zelenskyy in its push to stop the fighting. Trump’s at-times conciliatory approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin has fueled those concerns, but Trump adopted a tougher line last month when he announced heavy sanctions on Russia’s vital oil sector that come into force Friday.

“For any plan to work, it needs Ukrainians and Europeans on board,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said at the start of a meeting in Brussels of the 27-nation bloc’s foreign ministers. She added: “We haven’t heard of any concessions on the Russian side.”

German Foreign Minister Johannes Wadephul said he talked by phone Thursday with Witkoff and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to discuss “our various current efforts to end Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and thus finally put an end to the immeasurable human suffering.”

The conversations “also focused on specific ideas that are currently being discussed,” Wadephul said in a statement. He did not elaborate.

Plan would give Russia control of the Donbas

It was not clear whether the foreign ministers had seen the peace plan, which was first reported by Axios. The proposal was drawn up by U.S. and Russian envoys, and was said to include forcing Ukraine to cede territory, a prospect Zelenskyy has ruled out.

The Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts this year to stop the fighting have so far come to nothing.

The proposal, which could still be changed, calls in part for Ukraine to cede territory to Russia and to abandon certain weaponry, according to the person who had been briefed on the contours of the plan but was not authorized to comment publicly. It would also include the rollback of some critical U.S. military assistance.

Russia, as part of the proposal, would be given effective control of the entire eastern Donbas region, Ukraine’s industrial heartland made up of the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk regions, even though Ukraine still holds part of it. Putin has listed the capture of the Donbas as the key goal of the invasion.

Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, a close adviser to Putin, have been key to drafting the proposal, according to the person familiar with the matter.

A peace deal that requires Kyiv to hand over territory to Russia would not only be deeply unpopular with Ukrainians, it also would be illegal under Ukraine’s constitution. Zelenskyy has repeatedly ruled out such a possibility.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on social platform X late Wednesday that American officials “are and will continue to develop a list of potential ideas” for a lasting peace agreement which “will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday that there “there are no consultations per se currently underway” with the U.S. on ending the war in Ukraine. “There are certainly contacts, but processes that could be called consultations are not underway,” he told reporters.

EU accuses Russia of insincerity

Though the European diplomats appeared caught by surprise, reported elements of the plan were not new. Trump said last month that the Donbas region should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands.

EU diplomats have accused Putin of being insincere in saying he wants peace but refusing to compromise in negotiations while sustaining Russia’s grinding war of attrition in Ukraine.

Kallas, the EU’s chief diplomat, chided Putin’s forces for continuing to target civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, a day after a strike on the western city of Ternopil killed 26 people and wounded 93 others. About two dozen people were still missing.

Kallas said that “if Russia really wanted peace, it could have … agreed to (an) unconditional ceasefire already some time ago.”

Trump has stopped sending military aid directly to Ukraine, with European countries taking up the slack by buying weaponry for Ukraine from the United States. That has given Europe leverage in talks on ending the conflict.

Madhani reported from Washington. Associated Press journalist Sam McNeil in Brussels contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

By JOSH FUNK and ED WHITE, Associated Press

Federal investigators released dramatic photos Thursday of an engine flying off a doomed UPS cargo plane that crashed two weeks ago, killing 14 people in Kentucky, and said there was evidence of cracks in the left wing’s engine mount.

The MD-11 plane only got 30 feet (9.1 meters) off the ground, the National Transportation Safety Board said, citing the flight data recorder in its first formal but preliminary report about the Nov. 4 disaster in Louisville, Kentucky.

Three pilots on the plane were killed along with 11 more people on the ground near Muhammad Ali International Airport.

The NTSB said the plane was not due yet for a detailed inspection of key engine mount parts that had fractures. It still needed to complete nearly 7,000 more takeoffs and landings. It was last examined in October 2021.

“It appears UPS was conducting this maintenance within the required time frame, but I’m sure the FAA is now going to ponder whether that time frame is adequate,” aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti told The Associated Press after reading the report.

New pictures released by the NTSB show the left engine coming off the UPS plane and flying up and over the wing as it rolled down the runway.

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Minnesota’s annual “giving holiday” is underway, and as usual the generosity is incoming.

As of midday Thursday, more than $20 million had been donated to about 5,200 organizations including schools and nonprofits.

In 2024, more than $37 million was donated to 6,556 organizations, an all-time record.

The day of philanthropy, now in its 17th year, began in 2009 through GiveMN as a fun way to “shop” for charitable endeavors as the holiday season approaches with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and all the other ways we are tempted to spend our money this time of year. It’s become a tradition for many people across the state.

This year, according to a GiveMN survey, top causes currently are animals, the environment and hunger relief.

Info/donate at givemn.org/gtmd.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

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By LEAH WILLINGHAM

BOSTON (AP) — Inside the wide mouth of a stoneware jar, Daisy Whitner’s fingertips found a slight rise in the clay — a mark she hoped was a trace left behind by her ancestor, an enslaved potter who shaped the vessel nearly 175 years ago in South Carolina.

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Standing in the gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston last week, Whitner said she felt a quiet connection to her ancestor, David Drake, in that moment.

“I was telling the kids, ’Inside this jar, I’m sure I’m feeling his tears, sweat drops off his face, his arms,’” said 86-year-old Whitner, a Washington, D.C., resident and a retired account manager for The Washington Post.

The jar is one of two returned to Drake’s family as part of a historic agreement this month between Drake’s descendants and the MFA Boston, one of the institutions that holds pieces of his work.

The vessels are among hundreds of surviving works by “Dave the Potter,” an enslaved man who labored in the alkaline-glazed stoneware potteries of Edgefield, South Carolina, in the decades before and during the Civil War. Dave signed many of his jars — and inscribed some with rhyming couplets — an extraordinary and unparalleled assertion of identity and authorship during a time when literacy for enslaved people was criminalized.

The agreement represents what experts say is the first major case of art restitution involving works created by an enslaved person in the U.S. — a process traditionally associated with families seeking the return of art looted by the Nazis in World War II.

It’s also rare: as enslaved people were denied legal personhood and documentation, tracing the ownership or lineage of their works is often impossible.

Children’s book author Yaba Baker, Dave’s 54-year-old fourth-generation grandson, called the return “a spiritual restoration.” Baker, whose first two children’s books explore Black history, said the family felt a dual sense of pride and grief. Many Black families, he noted, struggle to trace their ancestry past a few generations; recovering Dave’s work gave them back a piece of themselves.

After the museum returned the pots to the family, they sold one back so people can continue to learn from Dave’s legacy. The other is on lease to the museum, at least temporarily. The MFA Boston said it wouldn’t disclose how much it paid.

“We don’t want to hide them away in our house. We want other people to be inspired by it,” Baker said. “We want people to know that this person, Dave the Potter, who was told he was nothing but a tool to be used, realized he had humanity. He deserved his own name on his pots. He deserved to write poetry. He deserved to know who he was.”

David Drake

Laboring in the pottery yards in the South Carolina heat, Dave etched his name next to the date — July 12, 1834 — on a clay jar that would be sold by his owner and used to store pork and beef rations for enslaved people like him across the region.

He also inscribed the jar, which would likely end up on a cotton plantation in South Carolina, with the couplet:

“Put every bit all between / Surely this jar will hold 14” to mark the jar’s 14-gallon capacity.

The vessel was the first of hundreds, if not thousands, of stoneware jugs and jars made by Dave alongside other enslaved potters over 50 years before and during the Civil War.

Much of Dave’s poetry followed Christian themes. As he aged, he wrote more and explored themes related to his enslavement. One of his most resonant poems was etched into a jar he produced in 1857, around the time scholars believe Dave and his family were separated after being sold to different slave owners.

“I wonder where is all my relation / friendship to all – and every nation”

Multiple Drake descendants said they felt especially moved by Dave’s question about his relations — and that their restitution felt like Dave’s question was finally answered.

Claiming authorship

It’s unclear what became of the jars after Dave died. The MFA purchased them in 1997 from an art dealer. MFA Boston’s Art of the Americas Chair Ethan Lasser said he thinks they survived mostly from pure “benign neglect” in South Carolina because they were large and difficult to transport or break.

A signed stoneware vessel created by enslaved potter David Drake is seen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The MFA has two Drake pots, a “Poem Jar” and a “Signed Jar,” both from 1857.

The jar the Drake descendants sold back to the museum is similar to the 1857 pot on which Dave asks about his relations because he uses first-person language that suggests ownership — something that makes it especially powerful, Lasser said.

“Think of this as an enslaved person, speaking in the first person claiming authorship,” Lasser said.

In the poem, Dave writes:

“I made this Jar = cash – / though its called = lucre Trash”.

On more than one pot, Dave writes “and Mark” next to his own name, suggesting he worked on the piece with another enslaved laborer. Oral histories indicate that Dave was disabled after losing a leg, although it’s unclear how, and may have needed help with his ceramic work later in life.

His last surviving jar, made as the Civil War raged on in 1862, reads: “I made this Jar, all of cross / If you don’t repent, you will be lost”.

Researchers believe Drake died sometime in the 1870s after gaining his freedom in the Civil War. He is accounted for in the 1870 census, but not in the 1880 census.

For the Drake descendants, encountering Dave’s work has been both moving and difficult — a collision of pride in his artistry and grief for the conditions in which he lived.

Yaba Baker, who has a 17-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son, said the experience gave his family something they had never had before: a traceable link.

“I was able to turn to my son and say, ‘This is your lineage.’ Dave the Potter was not only a great artist — he resisted oppressive laws, even though he could have been killed for it,” he said. “That’s what you come from. Before, we didn’t have that link.”

Yaba Baker said he often thinks about the anguish Dave may have felt if, as some historians speculate, the poems on his jars were attempts to signal to family members sold away from him — a common trauma of slavery.

“I can’t imagine not knowing where my own kids are,” Baker said. “Completing that circle is very moving for me.”

For his mother, Pauline Baker, discovering Dave’s story filled a void many Black families know intimately.

A stoneware vessel created by enslaved potter David Drake is seen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

“If you’re not African American, you don’t understand the missing links in your history,” she said. “When you do find a connection, it becomes very personal.” She studies his life — the heat, the labor, the loss of a limb — and wonders how he managed such precision and focus. “He did not allow them to enslave his mind,” said Baker, 78, a retired speech pathologist who worked for three decades in Washington, D.C., public schools.

Since the MFA agreement was announced, the family has heard from museums and private collectors who hold Dave’s work and want to discuss what ethical restitution might look like for them as well.

Daisy Whitner said she felt her ancestor’s presence each time she slid her hand inside the jar.

“It broke my heart,” she said. “The outside is beautiful, but when you think about what he went through — sunup to sundown, in that South Carolina heat, on one leg — this poor man in bondage had no say in working so hard for nothing.”