4.12.2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin says some proposals in a U.S. 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.
U.S. President Trump has set in motion the most intense diplomatic push to stop the fighting since Russia launched the full-scale invasion of its neighbor 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 authorized 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.
Putin spoke to the India Today TV channel before visiting New Delhi on Thursday. Before the full interview was broadcast, Russian state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti quoted some of his remarks in it.
Tass quoted Putin as saying that in Tuesday’s talks, the sides “had to go through each point” of the U.S. peace proposal, “which is why it took so long.”
“This was a necessary conversation, a very concrete one,” he said, with provisions that Moscow was ready to discuss, while others “we can’t agree to.”
Putin refused to elaborate on what Russia could accept or reject, and none of the other officials involved offered details of the talks.
“I think it is premature. Because it could simply disrupt the working regime” of the peace effort, Tass quoted Putin as saying.
European leaders, left on the sidelines by Washington as U.S. officials engage directly with Moscow and Kyiv, have accused Putin of feigning interest in Trump’s peace drive.
Russian barrages of civilian areas of Ukraine continued overnight into Thursday. A missile struck Kryvyi Rih on Wednesday night, wounding six people, including a 3-year-old girl, according to city administration head Oleksandr Vilkul.