Russia sees no breakthrough after Putin holds Ukraine talks with US

The Kremlin said the “territorial issue” remains unresolved after President Vladimir Putin held late-night talks with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on the latest peace plan for ending Russia’s war on Ukraine. 

There’s “no hope of achieving a long-term settlement” to the war until Russia’s demands for territory in Ukraine are accepted, Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, said in an audio recording on Telegram early Friday. That’s even as he characterized the almost four hours of negotiations in the Kremlin as “exceptionally substantive, constructive.” 

Talks will continue between US, Russian and Ukrainian representatives in the United Arab Emirates on Friday and Saturday. Separately, Witkoff and Putin’s envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, will discuss bilateral Russia-US economic matters in Abu Dhabi. 

This was Witkoff’s seventh visit to Putin in the past year as US President Donald Trump has pushed for a peace deal, so far without success. US and Ukrainian officials have said they’ve made significant progress on a 20-point plan to end the Russian full-scale invasion that’s lasted almost four years and spiraled into Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II.  

Still, Kyiv and Moscow remain at an impasse on key points including Putin’s demands for parts of Ukraine that remain under Kyiv’s control in its eastern Donbas territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 

“The question of Donbas is key,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters in an audio message on Friday. “It will be discussed, as well as the modalities — how the three sides see it — in Abu Dhabi today and tomorrow.” 

Russia is insisting on securing what it calls the “Anchorage understandings” reached at Putin’s August summit with Trump in Alaska. That would require Ukraine to turn over the whole of eastern Donetsk, while fighting would be frozen along the current lines of contact in the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.  

Ukraine rejects demands to withdraw its forces from heavily fortified areas of Donetsk that Putin’s military has failed to occupy in fighting that stretches back to 2014. US proposals have suggested turning the unoccupied area into a de-militarized or free economic zone under special administration.  

Igor Kostyukov, the head of Russian military intelligence, is set to lead Moscow’s delegation to the trilateral working group in Abu Dhabi, Ushakov said.  

Zelenskiy said Thursday that top officials including Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov and Kyrylo Budanov, head of his presidential office and the former military intelligence chief, will represent Ukraine. 

Witkoff and Kushner met with Putin hours after Trump held “good” talks with Zelenskiy on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. “He came and said he wants to make a deal,” Trump told reporters later on Air Force One.  

An agreement on postwar security guarantees for Ukraine “is ready for signing,” Zelenskiy said Friday. “This document will be the basis for more documents. But we have got the core, highway agreement on the security guarantees.” 

Even as peace negotiations go on, Putin has stepped up strikes on Ukraine’s power sector in freezing winter temperatures, leaving millions of people without heating and water. Ukraine has also struck Russian energy infrastructure causing disruptions. 

A visibly angry Zelenskiy tore into Europe for its apparent lack of willingness to stop Putin during a speech in Davos on Thursday. 

“Europe loves to discuss the future but avoids taking action today,” he told the audience. “Where is the line of leaders who are ready to act?”