After their hours-long meeting at the Kremlin on Tuesday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, were set to meet top Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov in Florida on Thursday.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said Putin would like to make a deal, but “what comes out of that meeting I can’t tell you because it does take two to tango.” The president added that the US had “something pretty well worked out [with Ukraine].”
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Putin accepted some US proposals aimed at ending the war in Ukraine and was prepared to keep working to find a compromise, but that “compromises have not yet been found”.
Both sides agreed not to disclose the substance of their discussion at the Kremlin, but at least one major hurdle to a settlement remains; the fate of four Ukrainian regions Russia partially occupies.
A Russian official told reporters that “so far, a compromise hasn’t been found” on the issue of territory, without which the Kremlin sees “no resolution to the crisis”.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has ruled out giving up territory that Russia has captured and on Wednesday said his team was preparing for meetings in the United States, adding that dialogue with Trump’s representatives will continue.
“Only by taking Ukraine’s interests into account is a dignified peace possible,” he said.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, took a stronger line, urging Putin to “stop wasting the world’s time.”
The negotiations have intensified at a difficult juncture for Kyiv, which has been losing ground to Russia on its eastern front while facing its biggest corruption scandal of the war.
Zelensky’s chief of staff, who had led the Ukrainian delegation at peace talks, resigned on Friday after anti-corruption investigators searched his home. Meanwhile Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine has gathered pace and Putin has said that Moscow is ready to fight on to seize the rest of the land it claims if Kyiv does not surrender it.
