Russian President Vladimir Putin says some proposals in a US plan to end the war in Ukraine are unacceptable to the Kremlin, indicating in comments published Thursday that any deal is still some ways off. US President Donald Trump has set in motion the most intense diplomatic push to stop the fighting since Russia launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbour nearly four years ago. But the effort has once again run into demands that are hard to reconcile, especially over whether Ukraine must give up land to Russia and how it can be kept safe from any future aggression by Moscow.
Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner are set to meet with Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, later Thursday in Miami for further talks, according to a senior Trump administration official who wasn’t authorised to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Putin said his five-hour talks Tuesday in the Kremlin with Witkoff and Kushner were “necessary” and “useful,” but also “difficult work,” and some proposals were unacceptable.