European and US officials are resigned to Russia’s war in Ukraine continuing into next year, acknowledging that the latest American peace initiative made no headway with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Putin is intent on stepping up attacks on Ukraine through the winter, testing its resistance and the resolve of Kyiv’s allies, according to European officials familiar with the matter. President Donald Trump’s envoys, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, made no significant progress at weekend talks in Moscow and Kyiv, the officials said, asking not to be identified discussing policy issues.
Putin and Trump had a “constructive and quite candid” discussion on the results of the envoys’ visits during an hour-long phone call on Tuesday, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said in an audio message to reporters. They agreed to remain in contact, he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday he hopes to meet with Trump in late September, in an audio clip sent to reporters. Discussions will continue with US and European allies at the level of national security advisors, and Ukraine wants further trilateral talks with Washington and Moscow in the fall, Zelenskyy said.
Russia expects a resumption of trilateral negotiations with Ukraine and the US, and remains open to a peaceful resolution of the war, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Tuesday, the Interfax news service reported.
The Russian president wants to seize control of all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region under any deal to end the war. Ukraine has repeatedly rejected the demand to hand over a fortress belt of cities in that region, which Russian forces have failed to capture in fighting dating back to 2014, and has proposed halting the war on the existing front lines to allow for negotiations.
The White House and the State Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Russia resumed missile strikes on Ukraine overnight after Putin ordered a three-day halt to attacks while Kushner and Witkoff visited Kyiv for the first time in the war. Zelenskyy said Ukraine will hold fresh talks Tuesday with countries and companies on more air-defense supplies, in a post on social media.
Putin showed no sign of softening his positions despite recent US signaling to Moscow that new ideas are needed to revive stalled peace talks, the officials said.
The US envoys brought “a couple of” good ideas to Kyiv, Zelenskyy said on Tuesday. He declining to elaborate, saying Kyiv agreed with Washington to work through the details more thoroughly before making them public.
Russia’s plan for the next six months is to intensify strikes on Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure to try to make life unbearable for civilians, and to step up hybrid attacks and political interference in Europe to try to undermine support for Kyiv, one of the people said.
Putin plans to press on with his war after the talks with Witkoff and Kushner, Bloomberg previously reported.
The Kremlin leader is betting he can emerge next spring with a stronger hand, while keeping Russia’s increasingly strained economy above water, the person said. Serious negotiations are unlikely until at least next year, said another person.
Ukraine’s allies must respond by prioritizing supplies of air-defense interceptors to help Kyiv defend itself, the people said.
European nations are planning to buy US-made Patriot air defense missiles to help Ukraine repel an expected increase in Russian attacks over the winter months. They’re finalizing a plan to use contributions to NATO’s Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, known as PURL, to purchase interceptors that would be delivered to Kyiv, according to people familiar with the matter.
“We must be prepared for a protracted conflict and for Ukraine’s requirements to persist in the months and years ahead, and we must also be prepared for other plausible contingencies as well,” US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby said at a meeting Tuesday of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.
Putin used the US envoys’ visit to project strength domestically ahead of Sept. 18-20 parliamentary elections to Russia’s State Duma, one of the people said. He kept the US delegation waiting until evening before meeting them at the Kremlin, leaving Witkoff and Kushner to have an hours-long lunch with Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev at an expensive central Moscow restaurant, the person added.
Trilateral talks between officials from the US, Russia and Ukraine may resume after the State Duma elections, they said, though the discussions are unlikely to move the needle on a peace deal.
Ushakov called Saturday’s talks “substantive, constructive, extremely frank and trusting” in a briefing after Putin met the US envoys for more than three hours.
“We had progress in Moscow,” Witkoff said at a press briefing after he and Kushner met with Zelenskyy in Kyiv on Sunday. “We have new ideas, and we brought them to Kyiv.”
Zelenskyy appeared more cautious about the outcome of the talks, seeing no quick end to the war and another tough winter ahead for Ukraine.
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