Five hours of talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and top United States negotiators did not yield a breakthrough on a possible Ukraine peace deal, a Kremlin aide said early Wednesday.
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner sat down for the high-level talks with Putin in the Kremlin Tuesday, culminating a week of intensive diplomacy as the Trump administration continues its push to end the Russian war in Ukraine.
The talks in the Russian capital were “very useful, constructive, and highly substantive,” but a “compromise option was not found,” Russian foreign policy adviser and Putin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters after the meeting.
“Some of the American proposals look more or less acceptable, though they need to be discussed,” Ushakov said, adding that other points “do not suit us.”
“The work will continue,” he said.
Among the previous sticking points are Kremlin demands for Ukraine to formally renounce its aspiration to join NATO and for Ukraine to surrender territory in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that has been annexed, but not yet conquered, by Russia.
The US side has not yet publicly commented on the talks, but ahead of the meeting the US had been “very optimistic” of reaching a deal to end the three-and-a-half-year war, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
A meeting between Putin and Trump had not been scheduled and a prospective face-to-face would “depend on the progress we’re able to achieve,” Ushakov said.
Ushakov said Putin and the US delegation discussed territorial issues in their meeting, “without which we do not see a solution to the crisis.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he expected to communicate with the US negotiation team immediately after their talks with Putin and that he was “waiting for signals” from the delegation on the outcome of the meeting.
