Russian President Vladimir Putin spent around five hours negotiating with Donald Trump's most trusted envoys until well after midnight in Moscow about the possible outlines of a peace settlement to end the war in Ukraine.
Trump has repeatedly complained that ending Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two has been one of the elusive foreign policy aims of his presidency and has at times scolded both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
"Our people are over in Russia right now to see if we can get it settled. Not an easy situation, let me tell you. What a mess," Trump said on Tuesday in Washington, adding that there were casualties of 25,000 to 30,000 per month in the war.
Special envoy Steve Witkoff, a billionaire Us real estate developer who has known Trump since the 1980s, and Jared Kushner, the husband of Trump's daughter Ivanka, began talks in the Kremlin at around 1630 GMT on Tuesday.
They talked with Putin, his foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, via interpreters, until well past midnight Moscow time, with the Kremlin announcing talks concluded only at about 2130 GMT.
There was no immediate word on the results - if any - of the meeting, though Dmitriev posted on X that the meeting was "productive" beside an emoji of a dove.
Witkoff was shown on Russian media arriving at the US embassy in Moscow.
So far peace talks have snagged over Russia's territorial demands to the whole of Donbas, which its forces do not fully control. Other sticking points are Russia's demands for a formal pledge that the US-led NATO alliance will not admit Ukraine and for limits on the Ukrainian army.
A leaked set of 28 US draft peace proposals emerged last week, alarming Ukrainian and European officials who said it bowed to Moscow's main demands.
European powers then came up with a counter-proposal, and at talks in Geneva, the United States and Ukraine said they had created an "updated and refined peace framework" to end the war.
Zelenskiy, speaking in Dublin, said everything would depend on the talks in Moscow but that he was afraid the United States could lose interest in the peace process.
"There will be no easy solutions ... It is important that everything is fair and open, so that there are no games behind Ukraine's back," he said.
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