By Dmitry Antonov and Steve Holland
MOSCOW/WASHINGTON, Dec 3 (Reuters) – The path ahead for Ukraine peace talks is unclear, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, after what he called “reasonably good” talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. envoys.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday that Putin accepted some U.S. proposals aimed at ending the war in Ukraine and was prepared to keep working to find a compromise.
U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner spent hours at the Kremlin, departing in the early hours of Wednesday morning with no specific breakthrough on ending the war.
Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said Witkoff and Kushner briefed him about the talks via telephone and told him their impression from Putin was that “he would like to make a deal.” What happens now, however, is unclear, Trump said.
“What comes out of that meeting I can’t tell you because it does take two to tango,” Trump said, without elaborating. He added: “We have something pretty well worked out (with Ukraine)”.
A White House official said Witkoff and Kushner would meet with Ukrainian officials in Miami on Thursday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, asked if it would be correct to say that Putin had rejected the U.S. proposals, disagreed.
“A direct exchange of views took place yesterday for the first time,” Peskov said. “Some things were accepted, some things were marked as unacceptable. This is a normal working process of finding a compromise.”
A Kremlin aide said after the meeting that “compromises have not yet been found.”
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address that his team is preparing for meetings in the United States and that the dialogue with Trump’s representatives will continue.
“Only by taking Ukraine’s interests into account is a dignified peace possible,” he said.
The negotiations have intensified at a difficult juncture for Kyiv, which has been losing ground to Russia on its eastern front while facing its biggest corruption scandal of the war.
Zelenskiy’s chief of staff, who had led the Ukrainian delegation at peace talks, resigned on Friday after anti-corruption investigators searched his home. Two cabinet ministers have been fired and a former business partner of Zelenskiy has been named as a suspect in the crackdown.
Peskov said Russia was grateful to Trump for his efforts but the Kremlin would not be giving a running commentary on discussions with the United States, as publicity was unlikely to be constructive.
“Work is currently being carried out at a working expert level,” Peskov said. “It is at the expert level that certain results should be achieved that will then become the basis for contacts at the highest level.”
A leaked set of 28 U.S. draft peace proposals emerged in November, alarming Ukrainian and European officials who said they bowed to Moscow’s main demands.
European powers then came up with a counter-proposal, and at talks in Geneva, the U.S. and Ukraine said they had created an updated and refined peace framework to end the war.
Putin on Tuesday said European powers were trying to sink the peace talks by proposing ideas which were absolutely unacceptable to Russia.
Putin’s foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters after the Witkoff talks that Moscow had previously received a 27-point set of proposals and then four additional documents which were discussed with Witkoff.
Putin last week said that the U.S. and Ukraine had divided up the initial proposals into four components. The exact contents have not been disclosed.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov and Steve Holland; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Andrew Osborn, Guy Faulconbridge and Edmund Klamann)
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