End to war in Ukraine 'no closer' after US-Russia talks

An end to the war in Ukraine is "no closer", and there is still much work to be done after a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and key US representatives, a Kremlin aide has said.

US President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner travelled to Russia for talks on a way to end the war in Ukraine.

After the talks, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said that, while Russia had agreed with its American colleagues not to disclose the substance of the negotiations, a compromise to the territorial issue had not been found.

Mr Witkoff and Mr Kushner will now return to the US and present their findings to Mr Trump.

Just before the meeting at the Kremlin, Mr Putin warned Europe it would face swift defeat if it went to war with Russia, and dismissed European counter-proposals on Ukraine as absolutely unacceptable.

Mr Trump has repeatedly said he wants to end the war, but his efforts, including a summit with Mr Putin in Alaska in August and meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have not brought peace.

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, offered Russia control of a fifth of Ukraine and would place restrictions on Ukraine's army.

European powers put forward a counter-proposal and at talks in Geneva last week, the United States and Ukraine said they had created an "updated and refined peace framework".

Mr Putin has now stepped up his rhetoric, saying that Europe risked locking itself out of talks and that its leaders were making "unacceptable" demands of Russia.

A smiling Mr Putin told Mr Witkoff he was glad to see him and asked about his and Mr Kushner's walk around Moscow, which included a stroll across Red Square past the mausoleum of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, to the towers of the Kremlin.

"It is a magnificent city," Mr Witkoff told Mr Putin, along with foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and Putin investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

The talks at the Kremlin took more than 4 hours and ended after midnight, local time.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for a "dignified peace", having repeatedly stressed that Russia should not be rewarded for aggression.

'They are on the side of war'

Asked about Russian media reports that Hungary's Foreign Minister had cautioned that Europe was preparing a war against Russia, Mr Putin said that Moscow did not want a war with Europe.

"They are on the side of war," he said of Europe.

"We can clearly see that all these changes are aimed at only one thing: to block the entire peace process altogether, to make such demands which are absolutely unacceptable to Russia."

"If Europe suddenly wants to start a war with us and starts it, we are ready right now," Mr Putin said.

He also threatened to sever Ukraine's access to the sea in response to drone attacks on tankers of Russia's "shadow fleet" in the Black Sea.

Mr Zelenskyy, speaking in Dublin, said everything would depend on the talks in Moscow.

"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.

Mr Putin, who launched his full-scale invasion into Ukraine nearly four years ago, has said the discussions so far are not about a draft agreement but about a set of proposals that he said last week "could be the basis for future agreements".

He has said he is ready to talk peace but that if Ukraine refuses an agreement, then Russia's forces will advance further and take more Ukrainian territory.

Russia captures key Ukrainian city: Putin

Earlier, Mr Putin said his country's troops had captured the city of Pokrovsk, in eastern Ukraine, in what would represent an important operational win after an almost 18-month siege.

While the claims are yet to be independently verified, Moscow's forces have been gaining ground in the city — which was once an important logistics hub for Ukraine's army — for some time.

In a video released by the Kremlin late on Monday, Mr Putin said for the first time his troops had captured the city.

"I want to thank you. This is an important direction. We all understand just how important," Mr Putin said in the video.

"It will ensure solutions going forward to the tasks that we initially set at the beginning of the special military operation," he added, employing the phrase Moscow uses to describe its nearly four-year military campaign in Ukraine.

On Tuesday, local time, Ukrainian military sources claimed the country's troops were still holding the northern parts of the city.

Pokrovsk had a pre-war population of around 60,000 people, but most of those fled long ago.

It is among the largest cities in the Donbas region, which Mr Putin has repeatedly identified as an important prize with regard to the motivations behind his full-scale invasion, which was ordered in February 2022.

After around 18 months of fierce fighting, Pokrovsk is now full of mainly empty, badly damaged buildings.

Strategically, however, it would help Moscow's forces continue their push to capture the roughly 10 per cent of Donbas territory that Ukraine still holds, and move north towards the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

Gaining control of the city, if confirmed, will have come at an enormous cost of lives for Mr Putin's forces.

In an update released in November, the UK's Foreign Office estimated Russia's troops had sustained around 100,000 casualties in and around Pokrovsk in the previous 12 months.

ABC with wires