Ukraine Peace Talks ‘Useful’ but Reaching Concensus ‘Difficult’: Putin

Russian President Vladimir Putin described his meeting with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner as “very useful” in comments reported on Dec. 4.

However, he also said that reaching a consensus on the issues at hand would be “difficult,” in a yet-to-be-aired interview with India Today conducted on Dec. 3, extracts of which have been reported by Russian state news agency TASS.

“This is a difficult task and a difficult mission that President Trump has taken on,” Putin said. “Getting the conflicting parties to reach some kind of consensus is no easy task.”

“But President Trump is really—I am sure of this—sincerely—trying to do this,” he added.

The meeting at the Kremlin between Witkoff, Kushner, and Putin, as well as a couple of the Russian president’s close aides, lasted five hours, stretching from the evening of Dec. 2 into the early Moscow morning of Dec. 3.

Putin said the meeting lasted so long because he had to go through each of the 28 points the United States has put forward in its proposed peace plan.

“What our American colleagues brought us was based, one way or another, on our agreements at my meeting with President Donald Trump in Alaska—we discussed these issues at the meeting in Anchorage,” he said, commenting on the substance of the plan.

Discussing the issue of the Donbas territories of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine, Putin said that Moscow had proposed that Kyiv withdraw its armed forces from the region before the full-scale war broke out, which he argued would have prevented the war.

“We immediately told Ukraine, the Ukrainian troops: the people don’t want to live with you. They went out to the referendum and voted for independence. Withdraw your troops, and there will be no military action. No, they prefer to fight. Well, now they’ve had enough,” Putin said.

Russia recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states in February 2022, shortly before Moscow launched its full-scale invasion, and then annexed the territories in September of that year following referendums.

The United Nations and much of the international community deemed both the claims of independence and Russia’s subsequent annexation illegal.

TASS reported on Dec. 4 that Putin said, “either we liberate these territories by force of arms. Or Ukrainian troops leave these territories and stop fighting there.”

The full India Today interview with Putin is set to be aired on Indian television in the evening of Dec. 4, as Putin heads to New Delhi to meet with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In Washington, Trump said on Dec. 3 that he had spoken with Witkoff and Kushner about their meeting with Putin, and had come away believing Russia wanted to bring hostilities to a close.

“Their impression was that  … he would like to see the war ended,” he told reporters.

“I think he’d like to get back to dealing a more normal life. I think he’d like to be trading with the United States of America, frankly, instead of … losing thousands of soldiers a week.”

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Kyiv wants “real peace, not appeasement” with Russia, at a speech to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Vienna, Austria, on Dec. 3.

“We still remember the names of those who betrayed future generations in Munich. This should never be repeated again. Principles must be untouchable, and we need real peace, not appeasement,” Sybiha said in an apparent reference to the 1938 agreement, which saw France and Britain agree to allow Nazi Germany to annex the Sudetenland, at the time part of Czechoslovakia.

“Europe had too many unfair peace deals in the past. All of them only led to new catastrophes,” he added, while also thanking the United States for its peace efforts and pledging that Ukraine would “use every opportunity to try to end this war.”

Reuters contributed to this report.