Overview
- A five-hour Kremlin meeting between Vladimir Putin and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner yielded no breakthrough, with Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov calling the talks constructive but saying peace was no closer.
- Putin said Moscow disagrees with parts of the US plan and repeated demands for Ukrainian withdrawal from the Donbas, keeping the core dispute over territory unresolved and tied to limits on Ukraine’s security options.
- US envoys are moving to meet Ukrainian negotiator Rustem Umerov in Florida, as President Donald Trump described the Moscow talks as "reasonably good" but said the path forward remains unclear.
- European governments complain of being sidelined and have circulated a counter-proposal that raises Ukraine’s peacetime troop cap and reframes NATO language, while advancing work on security guarantees and a possible reassurance force.
- Funding and process tensions are intensifying, with the EU weighing loans backed by frozen Russian assets and officials raising concerns over Witkoff’s reliance on Kremlin translators, even as NATO partners add pledges through the PURL mechanism.