Russia and the United States have failed to reach a compromise on a possible peace deal to end the war in Ukraine after a five-hour meeting in the Kremlin between President Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump’s top envoys, the Kremlin said.
Trump has repeatedly complained that ending Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II is one of the elusive foreign policy goals of his presidency. The US president has at times berated both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Talks in Moscow between Putin and Trump’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, continued past midnight. Afterwards, Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, said: “Compromises have not yet been found.”
“There is still a lot of work to be done,” Ushakov told reporters at a briefing in the Kremlin.
“Putin reacted negatively to some American proposals. Witkoff went to the US embassy in Moscow after the talks to brief the White House,” Ushakov said.
Ushakov added that a meeting between Putin and Trump is not currently planned, although he said the talks were constructive and that there are huge opportunities for US-Russian economic cooperation.
Ushakov said that Putin sent a number of important signals and greetings to Trump, but that the parties agreed not to reveal details to the media.
He added that they discussed the “territorial problem”, the Kremlin’s shorthand for Russian claims to all of Donbas, although Ukraine controls at least 5,000 square kilometers of territory that Russia considers its own. Almost all countries recognize Donbas as part of Ukraine.
