No compromise on Ukraine, Putin tells US envoys at the Kremlin

A televised opening, then two hours behind closed doors

Russian President Vladimir Putin met the United States envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner at the Kremlin on Thursday, 12 November 2026, for talks on ending the war in Ukraine, and told them in terms that left little room for doubt that Russia will not compromise on its hardline demands. The Senate Palace meeting lasted about two hours, and the Kremlin televised a lengthy opening exchange.

Putin said he would not water down Russia’s territorial demands to control parts of Ukraine that Moscow claims to have annexed, and he ruled out agreeing to foreign peacekeeping troops being stationed in Ukraine; a deployment he described as a “continuation of war”. He also rejected talk of a territorial settlement involving “grey”, or demilitarised, zones between the two sides.

The Russian leader did offer one opening: a short-term ceasefire in the frontline city of Kostyantynivka, in the Donetsk region, where he said some 400 to 500 civilians still lived. He proposed organising what he called a “humanitarian mission” there, modelled on a short truce last month that allowed hundreds of stranded residents to leave the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky in southern Ukraine. Moscow announced the fall of Kostyantynivka last July, a claim Kyiv contests.

Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev met the Americans at their plane on Thursday morning; the Kremlin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and the negotiator Vladimir Medinsky also sat at the table.

What the two sides have put on the record so far

Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Moscow after two days of talks in Abu Dhabi, where American, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators met on 10 and 11 November. Those sessions were the first direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine mediated by the United States in nine months. They ended without a breakthrough; but with an agreement in principle on a major prisoner exchange, which Kushner called the biggest of the war.

Witkoff struck an upbeat note as he left Moscow, telling reporters at Vnukovo Airport that progress had been made. “People didn’t think that we were going to restart trilateral. We’ve restarted it. We’ve set a new meeting,” he said. He also said European representatives would join the next round. Ushakov confirmed that trilateral talks would continue, but appeared to play down Witkoff’s assertion about European participation.

The Americans left the Kremlin on Thursday afternoon and headed for Dublin, where they were due to brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is attending a European summit there. Kushner has urged Europe to choose a single representative for the talks.

Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that there was a “window of opportunity” to achieve “a result” before 2027. He added on Thursday that the Russian negotiators had admitted in Abu Dhabi that they had no permission from the Kremlin to discuss a halt to Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure or a de-escalation of attacks on shipping in the Black Sea.

Thursday’s meeting was the tenth time Witkoff has met Putin in person since the war began.

What would a Kostyantynivka truce actually require?

The first unanswered question is whether Putin’s Kostyantynivka proposal can become a real pause in the fighting. No terms have been published: who would monitor a ceasefire there, how long it would last, and whether Kyiv, which disputes Moscow’s claim to control the city, would accept the arrangement are all unknown.

The second is whether Europe will actually get a seat at the table. Witkoff says European representatives will join the next round; Ushakov’s careful wording suggests Moscow has not agreed to that yet. Until a date and a guest list are announced, the European seat remains an American proposal rather than a settled fact.

The third is the prisoner exchange itself: the number of people involved and the timing still need to be settled.

And the largest question of all is whether Putin’s message, that Europe must decide whether it wants “peace or war”, is an invitation to negotiate or a condition for talking at all. The Dublin briefing will show how Zelenskyy and the Europeans read it.

The deal is not in reach, and both sides now say so in public

Putin’s comments appeared to douse hopes that a deal to end the war could be within grasp, after Zelenskyy had spoken of a window of opportunity before 2027. The gap is not a detail of drafting: Moscow demands control of the Donbas and the four regions it has formally annexed, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia, despite not having full control over them, and Kyiv has rejected that demand outright.

The meeting also moved the argument about Europe to the centre of the diplomacy. Moscow has reframed the discussions as part of a wider conversation about European security, and the Americans are pressing for European representatives to join the next round. Kyiv and European leaders have urged against a new “Yalta”, a carve-up of the continent into spheres of influence, and insist the talks must focus on ending the Ukraine war first.

Meanwhile the war itself goes on. Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure continue, the negotiators in Abu Dhabi would not even discuss pausing them, Zelenskyy said, and he has warned of recurring disruptions to Starshield, the military-grade satellite service his forces depend on. A diplomatic track that cannot pause the fighting leaves civilians paying the price of every delay.

Five dimensions of a shuttle that has not yet moved the war

Geopolitics: the week’s diplomacy has quietly changed the subject. Moscow has reframed the talks as a discussion of European security, while Kyiv and the Europeans insist the war itself comes first; a disagreement about what the negotiation is even about, and the reason a new “Yalta” is the word both sides now reach for.

Economics: the war’s economic front is the grid. Russian strikes on energy infrastructure, which Moscow’s negotiators would not even discuss pausing in Abu Dhabi, are a weapon aimed at Ukrainian cities as winter approaches, and the prisoner exchange is the one currency both sides still trade freely.

Demographics: the numbers in this story are small and human, 400 to 500 civilians in Kostyantynivka, a prisoner list still uncounted, set against a war now measured in years.

History: this is the tenth Witkoff-Putin meeting, and the first direct American-mediated talks between the belligerents in nine months. The pattern of the last four years is that process returns faster than substance; the question is whether a prisoner exchange and a European seat can break it.

Technology: the fighting now runs on networks as much as on artillery, and Zelenskyy’s warnings about Starshield show how fragile the Ukrainian war effort’s communications have become.

What the Dublin briefing will decide, and what it cannot

The first consequence of the Moscow meeting will be visible in Dublin. If Zelenskyy and the Europeans accept Witkoff’s account, progress, a new meeting, a European seat, the trilateral format survives and grows. If they read Putin’s televised refusal as the real message, the American shuttle loses its momentum and the argument returns to the battlefield.

The second is the prisoner exchange. A completed swap on the scale Kushner described would be the largest of the war and the first tangible product of the Abu Dhabi round.

The third runs in the opposite direction. Every week the talks continue without a pause in the fighting, the energy war deepens: grids fail, cities darken, and the space for a negotiated settlement narrows.

What happens next in Dublin?

Witkoff and Kushner were due to brief Zelenskyy in Dublin after leaving Moscow, and the Ukrainian president’s reading of the Kremlin meeting will set the tone for everything that follows. The Europeans, meeting in their own summit, will discuss whether to name a single representative for the talks; the step Kushner has pressed for and the step Moscow has so far treated with caution.

Witkoff said a date for the next trilateral meeting would be announced shortly, and the prisoner exchange, its numbers, its timing, its mechanics, should become clearer in the coming days.