President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, December 3rd, that he believes Russia’s Vladimir Putin wants to end the Ukraine war despite inconclusive talks in Moscow, as U.S. officials prepared for a follow-up meeting with Kyiv’s top negotiator.
Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner reached no breakthrough on halting Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.
The Kremlin said afterwards it found parts of the U.S. plan to end the war unacceptable, even though the proposal includes Ukraine ceding parts of the eastern Donbas region it still holds nearly four years since the start of the war.
“I can tell you that they had a reasonably good meeting with President Putin,” Trump said when a reporter asked him about the talks, adding afterwards that the talks were “very good.” Pressed on whether Witkoff and Kushner got any sense that Putin genuinely wanted to halt Russia’s nearly four-year-old war, Trump replied: “He would like to end the war. That was their impression.”
Trump added that Ukraine “pretty well” backed the U.S. proposal, although he added that Kyiv should have done so earlier when he had a heated meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval office in February.
But while the White House had voiced optimism ahead of the Kremlin talks, Moscow said that the two sides had failed to reach a compromise and that more work was needed. The Kremlin added on December 3rd that its army’s recent battlefield successes in Ukraine had bolstered its position and that Kyiv’s ties to NATO remained a key question.
Moscow also said that Russia was still committed to diplomacy, despite Putin’s stark warning earlier this week that Moscow was prepared to fight Europe if it wanted war.
“We are still ready to meet as many times as is needed to reach a peace settlement,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
