Moscow and Washington continue to look for a compromise, spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said
© Getty Images / Vladislav Zolotov
Russia has not rejected the US peace plan on the Ukraine conflict, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, adding that Moscow and Washington are continuing to work toward finding a compromise.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Peskov stressed that “it would be wrong” to say President Vladimir Putin had turned down the American proposals after the talks in Moscow with US envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
He said the Kremlin meeting was the first direct exchange on the plan and that “some things were accepted, some were marked as unacceptable,” describing it as a “normal negotiation process” and “a search for compromise.”
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He declined to spell out details of the four documents related to the Ukraine peace plan handed over to Moscow. “We proceed from the fact that in this case it is better for these negotiations to be conducted in silence,” he said, adding that Russia is “not a supporter of megaphone diplomacy” and that Moscow sees the Americans as following the same principle.
His comments came after a roughly five-hour meeting in the Kremlin between Putin and Witkoff, which was joined by Kushner, focused on possible ways to end the fighting. Presidential aide Yury Ushakov called the discussion “very useful, constructive [and] very substantive,” adding that the sides “discussed the substance, not specific wording and solutions.”
The talks were built around a US-drafted framework that first surfaced publicly in November when a 28-point proposal was leaked to the media. The plan would reportedly require Kiev to give up parts of Russia’s Donbass still under its control, renounce NATO membership ambitions and accept limits on the size of its armed forces. Since then, however, Ukraine and its EU backers attempted to impose their own conditions during several rounds of talks with the US.
While Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has publicly rejected any territorial concessions to Russia, he acknowledged that there were “no simple solutions” for ending the conflict, and that he expected “signals” from the US negotiators – who reportedly cancelled an expected meeting with him after the Kremlin talks.