Russian President Vladimir Putin will on Thursday discuss a possible peace plan for Ukraine with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow after President Donald Trump said a deal to end the war is “reasonably close”.
The US has held talks with Russia, and separately with Kyiv and European leaders, on different drafts of a plan for ending the war in Ukraine, but no deal has been reached despite Trump’s repeated promises to clinch one.
Putin, speaking at a Russian security council meeting late on Wednesday, said he would meet Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Kushner in Moscow to “continue dialogue on the Ukrainian settlement”, Trump’s “Board of Peace” idea and the possibility of using frozen Russian assets.
At stake is how to end the deadliest war in Europe since World War 2, the future of Ukraine, the extent to which European powers are sidelined and whether a peace deal brokered by the US will endure.
“I think I can say we’re reasonably close,” Trump said. “We have to get it stopped. I believe they’re at a point where they can come together and get a deal done.
“If they don’t, they’re stupid,” Trump said, referring to Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Last week Trump told Reuters Zelensky was the main impediment to reaching an agreement.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, triggering the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the depths of the Cold War.
Ukraine and European leaders said Russia cannot be allowed to achieve its aims after what they cast as an imperial-style land grab. If Russia wins, European powers said, then it will one day attack Nato. Moscow said such claims are ridiculous and it has no intention of attacking a Nato member.
Russia said European leaders are intent on scuttling the peace talks by introducing conditions they know will be unacceptable to Russia, which took 12km² to 17km² of Ukrainian territory per day in 2025.
Putin, who has repeatedly said he is open to discussing peace, casts the war as a watershed moment in relations with the West, which he said humiliated Russia after the Soviet Union fell in 1991 by enlarging Nato and encroaching on what he considers Moscow’s sphere of influence.
Reuters
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