Russia
‘ready’ for war with Europe, Putin says, as US peace talks end without progress
Kremlin
aide says Ukraine crisis is no closer to resolution after Witkoff talks, as
Russian president accuses European powers of sabotaging peace
Pjotr
Sauer and Andrew Roth
Wed 3 Dec
2025 05.33 CET
Russia
and the US did not make progress toward a peace deal for Ukraine during their
talks, a senior aide to Vladimir Putin has said, hours after the Russian
president issued threats that Russia was ready for war with Europe.
In
remarks to Russian media, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that after a five-hour
meeting with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner,
the two sides were “neither further nor closer to resolving the crisis in
Ukraine. There is a lot of work to be done.”
Ushakov
called the meeting “extremely useful, constructive, and informed”, but
nonetheless said the two sides had not come to an agreement on key issues,
including the potential lines of territorial control in a potential peace deal
between Russia and Ukraine.
“We did
not discuss … specific American proposals, but discussed the essence of what is
embedded in these American documents,” Ushakov said of the peace plan presented
by the US side. “We could agree with some things … and the president also did
not hide our critical and even negative attitude towards a number of
proposals.”
Some
aspects of the negotiations would not be revealed, Ushakov said, and he
indicated that another summit between Trump and Putin was not imminent.
The US
secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said later that “some progress” was made on
security guarantees. “What we have tried to do, and I think have made some
progress, is figure out, what could the Ukrainians live with that gives them
security guarantees for the future,” Rubio told Fox News. He added that the US
hoped a compromise would allow them “not just to rebuild their economy, but to
prosper as a country”.
The
relatively downbeat assessments of Tuesday night’s diplomacy follows combative
opening statements from Putin as Witkoff and Kushnerarrived for talks at the
Kremlin, in which he accused European powers of sabotaging peace in Ukraine and
that “European demands” on ending the war were “not acceptable to Russia”.
“Europe
is preventing the US administration from achieving peace on Ukraine,” Putin
said, adding: “Russia does not intend to fight Europe, but if Europe starts, we
are ready right now.”
Putin did
not clarify which European demands he found unacceptable.
“They are
on the side of war,” Putin said of European powers.
Witkoff,
on his sixth trip to Moscow this year, was expected to present Putin with an
updated version of a US peace proposal drafted with input from a senior Russian
official and reworked to make it more acceptable to Kyiv.
The
Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he was “awaiting signals” from
the US delegation after its meeting with Putin, in an intense round of shuttle
diplomacy that the Trump administration has claimed is its best chance yet of
bringing an end to the war.
But there
remains significant skepticism that Russia is ready to accept any concessions,
rather than continue the war and await a further breakdown in relations between
the Trump White House and its European allies.
“I am
ready to receive all the signals and ready for a meeting with President Trump,”
Zelenskyy posted on X. “Everything depends on today’s discussions.”
Several
US media outlets reported that Zelenskyy was expected to meet with Witkoff and
Kushner in Europe after the meeting.
A short
video feed from the Kremlin showed the two small delegations sitting on
opposite sides of an oval white table, with Putin seated next to his advisers
Kirill Dmitriev and Yuri Ushakov. Putin asked Witkoff and Kushner about a short
tour of Moscow they had taken before the meeting, with Witkoff calling it a
“magnificent city”. The feed then cut out.
The two
Trump allies arrived in Moscow on Tuesday after meeting Ukrainian officials at
the weekend in Florida to discuss revisions to the original 28-point peace
plan, which overwhelmingly favoured Moscow.
Zelenskyy,
on a diplomatic push to rally support among European capitals that have backed
changes to the original plan, said in Paris that the updated version of the
proposal “looks better” but emphasised it was “not over yet”.
Zelenskyy
has objected in particular to provisions in the 28-point plan that would have
required Ukraine to surrender territory in the east that it currently controls,
and impose limits on the size of its military. He has also demanded clear,
enforceable security guarantees from the west to prevent a future Russian
invasion.
Putin,
for his part, has said that only the original US proposal could serve as a
basis for further talks, while also stating that it required significant
revisions.
Despite
intense shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks, which has produced several revisions
to the US peace plan, bridging the gap remains difficult: Russia’s maximalist
demands in effect require Ukraine’s capitulation.
Trump
said in remarks to a cabinet meeting on Tuesday that the Ukraine war was a
“mess” and not an easy situation to resolve.
Putin’s
comments appeared aimed at driving a wedge between Washington and European
capitals. European officials have had some success in pushing back against the
original US plan, though it remains unclear to what extent Washington is taking
their concerns into account.
The
Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, earlier on Tuesday said Putin and Witkoff
would discuss the “understandings” reached recently between Washington and
Kyiv, adding that Russia remained open to talks but would insist on achieving
the goals of its “special operation”.
Those
goals amount to sweeping demands that would severely erode Ukraine’s
sovereignty, including deep cuts to its armed forces, a ban on western military
assistance, far-reaching limits on political independence, and the handover of
Ukrainian-controlled territory in the east of the country.
On the
eve of the talks with the US delegation in Moscow, Putin claimed Russian forces
had taken control of the strategic city of Pokrovsk in Ukraine.
Dressed
in military fatigues during a visit to a command centre on Monday evening, the
Russian president hailed what he called the “important” capture of Pokrovsk,
once a major logistical hub for the Ukrainian army, though Ukrainian officials
later disputed the claim.
Russia
has spent more than a year attempting to seize the frontline hub, seen as a
gateway to Donetsk, and has suffered heavy losses in the process.
Ukrainian
analysts and military bloggers have acknowledged that Russia now holds most of
Pokrovsk, with battlefield maps showing its forces largely in control.
Buoyed up
by recent gains at the front, Putin has indicated in recent weeks that the
Russian military was prepared to keep fighting if diplomacy faltered,
repeatedly emphasising that his forces remained on the offensive on the
battlefield.
The
Russian leader also on Tuesday threatened retaliation against Ukraine’s ports
and shipping after Kyiv in recent days struck several vessels in Russia’s
so-called shadow fleet in the Black Sea.
The
Russian president threatened that Moscow would “step up strikes on Ukrainian
ports and on any ships entering them” in response to attacks on Russian
tankers, which he described as “piracy”.
Echoing
the Kremlin, Russian state media on Tuesday struck a confident tone before the
US visit. Komsomolskaya Pravda, often described as “Putin’s favourite
newspaper”, wrote that the president’s remarks suggested “more and more
Ukrainian territory is coming under our control – and that next time Russia’s
terms may be tougher”.
The paper
implied that Moscow viewed the latest US-Ukrainian talks as a dead end,
claiming Kyiv was refusing to capitulate. “The US has tried for the third time
in the past 10 days to pressure Ukraine, and Washington has once again failed,”
it wrote.
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