President Donald Trump on Wednesday said U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner had a "reasonably good meeting" with Russian President Vladimir Putin duringhigh-stakes negotiations in Moscow, adding that the U.S. negotiators believed Putin "would like to end the war."
"I don't know what the Kremlin is doing. I can tell you that they had a reasonably good meeting with President Putin. We're going to find out. It's a war that should have never been started," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump said he spoke with Witkoff and Kushner Tuesday night following their meeting at the Kremlin.
"What comes out of that meeting? I can't tell you, because it does take two to tango," Trump said.
"He would like to end the war," Trump said of Putin. "That was their impression. Now, whether or not you know that was their impression, you know their impression was that they'd like to see he would like to see the war ended."
Kremlin calls talks with Witkoff 'useful' but says no compromise on Ukraine found
"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, you know, losing thousands of soldiers a week. But their impression was very strongly that he'd like to make a deal," Trump said of Putin.
Witkoff and Kushner have invited Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov to Miami on Thursday for further peace talks, according to a senior U.S. administration official.
Witkoff and Kushner conducted marathon talks with Putin to bring about the end of the nearly four-year Russian invasion of Ukraine, but no immediate breakthroughs were announced by either side.
Though both sides in the negotiations -- led by Witkoff and Kushner from the U.S. -- and Putin who conducted negotiations in Moscow -- vowed secrecy and provided no comprehensive briefings of their discussion, it became clear that a deal for peace was not yet in hand as Trump has long desired.
"So far no compromise option has been found, but some American proposals appear more or less acceptable," said Putin's top foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, who was in the room for the Moscow meeting and spoke to Russian media afterward. "The president did not hide our critical or negative view of certain proposals."
"We agreed on some things ... while others caused criticism, and the president [Putin] also made no secret of our critical, even negative, attitude toward a number of proposals. But the main thing is that we had a very useful discussion," Ushakov said.
It's unclear which peace plan was presented to the Russians after details of an initial 28-point plan were presented to Ukraine last month. Kyiv and its European allies worked quickly to amend down to a 19-point plan.
None of the parties involved in the negotiations this week has detailed the current version of the proposal.
Following the high-profile meeting between Witkoff, Kushner and Putin -- in which the U.S. delegation presented Putin with four documents outlining Washington's plan -- Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said negotiators from Kyiv would meet with European leaders in Brussels on Wednesday to discuss the outcome of the Kremlin meeting.
He added that senior negotiator Umerov and army chief Andrii Hnatov would then prepare for meetings with the U.S. envoys.
Geopolitical experts believe the essence of the entire Ukraine-Russia peace plan now hinges on two main points: territory concessions and security guarantees.
Major hangups on a peace deal remain
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was not part of the American delegation sent to Moscow, said late Tuesday that "some progress" had been made on the truce proposal, but "we're still not there -- we're still not close enough."
He stressed that "only Putin can end this war on the Russian side."
He also highlighted a major sticking point in the peace deal: Moscow's continued demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the entire Donbas region. Ukraine has long rejected ceding territory to Russia.
"What they're literally fighting over now is about a 30-to-50 kilometer space and the 20% of the Donetsk region that remains," Rubio said on Fox News. "And so, what we have tried to do -- and I think have made some progress -- is figure out what could the Ukrainians live with that gives them security guarantees for the future they're never going to be invaded again."
Rubio further outlined that the peace plan should also address Ukraine's long-term sovereignty and independence "so that they don't become a puppet state" while also allowing for Ukraine's economy to recover and prosper.
"That's what we're trying to achieve here," Rubio said.
John Hardie, Russia Program Deputy Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that if the Kremlin refuses to come to the bargaining table, a peace deal will remain elusive.
"The Kremlin remains unwilling to make the compromises necessary for a settlement Kyiv can live with. Until that changes, President Trump's diplomatic efforts are unlikely to produce a deal, let alone one that protects U.S. and Ukrainian interests," Hardie told ABC News. "Washington needs to work with its allies and Ukraine to maximize military, economic, and diplomatic pressure on Moscow."
But Rubio stressed in his television interview that it's up to both Ukraine and Russia to settle their differences to reach a durable and lasting peace.
"And at the end of the day, it's not up to us. It's not our war. We're not fighting it; there aren't American soldiers. It's on another continent. We are engaged because we're the only ones that can," he said. "The only leader in the world that can talk to both sides and make a deal, if a deal is possible, is President Trump. And he's been very patient. He's dedicated a lot of time to it."
"Ultimately, it's going to be up to them. If they decide they don't want to end the war, then the war will continue," he added.
Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said it was in Putin's "interest just to keep the process going, to have a long process of diplomatic engagement."
"He wants to have a broader conversation about Russia's reintegration with the West and relations with the United States, commercial agreements with the United States, and to make this long and drawn out while he continues to bomb Ukraine's energy infrastructure and makes incremental progress on the ground," Froman said during a televised interview Tuesday.
ABC News' Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
