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.
Ukrainian officials have continued to reject Russia’s maximalist demands, which the Kremlin continues to consider red lines.
President Donald Trump welcomes Russian President Vladimir Putin to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on August 15, 2025 in Anchorage, Alaska.
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.
“We will receive certain signals, and if the signals work out – if it is a fair game with our partners – then perhaps we will meet with the American delegation very soon,” Zelensky said before the talks.
The Ukrainian leader said that a higher-level delegation would be sent if the messages from the Americans signal an opportunity for “global but swift decisions.”
Hours before the meeting, Putin issued a warning that while Russia is not planning to go to war with Europe, it was “ready” to respond if Europe were to initiate one.
Earlier, Putin had accused European leaders of trying to block the US-proposed peace deal by “putting forward demands that are absolutely unacceptable for Russia,” and suggested that Ukraine’s European allies are “on the side of the war.”
“They themselves refused peace negotiations and are interfering with President Trump,” he added.
While Putin did not explain his thinking in detail, he was likely referring to the changes reportedly made to Trump’s original 28-point peace plan, which was put forward by the US last month and rejected by Ukraine and its European allies.
A later meeting in Geneva between Ukrainian and US delegations resulted in changes to the draft, making it more palatable to Kyiv.
But just hours before key talks, the Kremlin reiterated its position that any peace deal must resolve what it describes as the “initial causes” or “underlying reasons” for its invasion – shorthand for a longstanding list of demands that has included a halt to NATO expansion, recognition of Russia’s claimed control over occupied Ukrainian regions and the effective end of Ukraine as a sovereign state.
A senior NATO official told reporters they see no indication that Moscow is willing to make “meaningful concessions” to end the war in Ukraine. The official said that Russia maintains its territorial demands and will still “aim to ensure Ukraine’s military capabilities are weakened as much as possible to pave the way for further aggression.”
The Putin-US meeting came US officials and a Ukrainian delegation met in Miami on Sunday for talks that Secretary of State Marco Rubio described as “very productive,” though he cautioned that more work remained.
Witkoff and Kushner, who does not hold an official US government role but has re-emerged as a key figure in the administration’s diplomatic efforts, could be seen strolling through Moscow’s Red Square with Kremlin representative Kirill Dmitriev before their meeting, according to footage from Russian state-owned news agency TASS.
Earlier, Witkoff and Dmitriev had lunch at a Michelin-starred Moscow restaurant, where they dined on caviar, quail, venison and crab, the restaurant’s director, Maxim Romantsev, told Russia’s Izvestia newspaper.