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Russian President Vladimir Putin has cast doubt on the latest US efforts to make a peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, but confirmed that a US delegation would travel to Moscow early next week.
In his first public response to a new 28-point text aiming to end the war, Putin said it was too early to describe the document as a treaty. Asked about his stance on the Donbas region, Putin said Russia would stop fighting only when Ukraine withdrew its troops.
“It would be impolite to speak about any final versions [of the plan], since there are none,” Putin told reporters at a press conference during a visit to Kyrgyzstan on Thursday. “There was no draft [peace] treaty. There was a set of questions that were proposed to be discussed and finally formulated.”
His comments suggest he is sticking to his approach with US President Donald Trump, in which he has repeatedly signalled readiness to negotiate while holding fast to hardline demands. Meanwhile, Russia is slowly advancing on the battlefield.
Putin said the 28-point list of “possible agreements’’ unveiled last week had emerged from a conversation with ‘‘American negotiators’’ before his August meeting with Trump in Alaska, and that Russia had received it “through certain channels”. He added that it could be used as a basis for further discussions.
The 28-point US peace proposal offered significant concessions to Moscow, alarming officials in Europe and Ukraine, who agreed a modified 19-point version with the US in Geneva earlier this week.
Putin said international legal recognition of Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014, and Donbas — where Moscow’s forces hold all of the Luhansk region and part of the Donetsk area — as Russian territory was crucial. The international community recognises both areas as Ukrainian.
Putin again signalled that Moscow is seeking not only a settlement in Ukraine but a broader discussion on global security architecture. “There is sense in talking and putting some points in order on the issues of pan-European security,” he said.
The US president said on Tuesday that US special envoy Steve Witkoff and possibly Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner would visit Moscow. “Steve Witkoff is going over, maybe with Jared. I’m not sure about Jared going, but he’s involved in the process, smart guy, and they’re going to be meeting with President Putin, I believe next week in Moscow,” Trump said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment about who would be attending from the US.
Ukraine’s leadership has expressed cautious support for the revised 19-point version of the US plan that toned down or removed several measures Kyiv denounced as unacceptable.
Senior Ukrainian officials close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times on Tuesday that the revised version of the plan still included territorial issues and US security guarantees, but that a cap on Ukraine’s military had been increased from 600,000 to 800,000 men.
The Ukrainian and US delegations would meet again at the end of the week to “build on the results achieved in Geneva”, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak wrote on X on Thursday.
Ukraine’s foreign minister Andriy Sybiha said on Thursday that Kyiv was still working on setting up a meeting with the US “at the highest level”. Kyiv has insisted that the most politically charged matters, including potential territorial concessions, would have to be negotiated directly by Trump and Zelenskyy.
“There are sensitive issues that can only be discussed by the heads of state,” Sybiha said in a press conference in Kyiv.
Additional reporting by Amy Mackinnon in Washington
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