Ukraine and its European allies accused Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday of feigning interest in peace efforts after five hours of talks with U.S. envoys at the Kremlin produced no breakthrough.
The Russian leader “should end the bluster and the bloodshed and be ready to come to the table and to support a just and lasting peace,” said U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha urged Putin to “stop wasting the world’s time.”
The remarks reflect the high tensions and gaping gulf that remain between Russia on one side and Ukraine and its European allies on the other over how to end a war that Moscow started when it invaded its neighbor nearly four years ago.
A day earlier, Putin accused the Europeans of sabotaging the U.S.-led peace efforts — and warned that, if provoked, Russia would be ready for war with Europe.
Since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, European governments, along with the U.S., have spent billions of dollars to support Kyiv financially and militarily. Under President Donald Trump, however, the U.S. has tempered its support — and instead made a push to end the war.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin spokesman said he wouldn’t discuss the substance of the talks but pushed back on any suggestion that Putin had rejected the U.S. peace plan.
Where the peace talks go from here depends largely on whether the Trump administration decides to increase the pressure on Russia or on Ukraine to make concessions.
Unclear where peace talks go now
A U.S. peace proposal that became public last month was criticized for being tilted heavily toward Moscow because it granted some of the Kremlin’s core demands that Kyiv has rejected as nonstarters.
Many European leaders worry that if Russia gets what it wants in Ukraine, it will have free rein to threaten their countries, which already have faced incursions from Russian drones and fighter jets, and an alleged widespread sabotage campaign.
Putin met Tuesday in Moscow with Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. The Russian and American sides agreed not to disclose the substance of the talks, but at least one major hurdle to a settlement — the fate of four Ukrainian regions Russia partially seized and occupies and claims as its own — remains.
After the talks, Yuri Ushakov, a senior adviser to Putin, told reporters that “so far, a compromise hasn’t been found” on the issue of territory, without which, he said, the Kremlin sees “no resolution to the crisis.”
Ukraine has ruled out giving up territory that Russia has captured.
Asked whether peace was closer or further away after these talks, Ushakov said: “Not further, that’s for sure.”
“But there’s still a lot of work to be done, both in Washington and in Moscow,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that it was “not correct” to say that Putin had rejected the U.S. peace plan. He declined to comment further on the talks.
“We’re deliberately not going to add anything,” he said. “It’s understood that the quieter these negotiations are conducted, the more productive they will be.”
AP