Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy adviser said Sunday that changes by the Europeans and kyiv to U.S. proposals to end the war in Ukraine had not improved prospects for peace.
U.S.-drafted proposals to end the nearly four-year war, which were leaked to the media last month, have sparked European and Ukrainian concerns that they lean too much in Russia’s favor and that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration could force kyiv to give in too much.
Since then, European and Ukrainian negotiators have met with Trump’s envoys to try to add their own proposals to the U.S. plans, although the exact content of the current proposal has not been disclosed.
Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow that European and Ukrainian changes would not increase the chances of peace.
“This is not a prediction,” Ushakov told Russian news agencies, although he clarified that he had not yet seen the exact proposals on paper.
“I am sure that the proposals that the Europeans and the Ukrainians have made or are trying to make absolutely do not improve the document and do not improve the possibility of achieving long-term peace.”
PUTIN’S ENVOY
Ushakov made the comments after Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev met in Florida on Saturday with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Dmitriev said negotiations would continue on Sunday.
The Miami meeting followed Friday’s U.S. talks with Ukrainian and European officials.
At stake is whether Putin will agree to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II, the future of Ukraine, the extent to which European powers will be marginalized and whether or not a peace deal brokered by the current US administration will be sustainable.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Saturday that Ukraine would support a U.S. proposal for three-party talks with the United States and Russia if it facilitated more prisoner exchanges and paved the way for meetings of national leaders.
Ushakov said the proposal for three-way negotiations had not been seriously discussed by anyone and was not being developed.
Russia says European leaders intend to ruin peace talks by introducing conditions they know are unacceptable to Russia, which has seized 12 to 17 km² (4.6 to 6.6 square miles) of Ukrainian territory per day by 2025.
Ukrainian and European leaders say Russia cannot be allowed to achieve its goals after what they see as an imperial-style land grab.
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 height of the Cold War.
Putin presents the war as a turning point in relations with the West, which he says humiliated Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, expanding NATO and encroaching on what he sees as Moscow’s sphere of influence.
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