President Vladimir Putin warned Europe that it would suffer a swift defeat if it went to war with Russia, and rejected European proposals on Ukraine just ahead of a meeting in the Kremlin today with two of US President Donald Trump's most influential envoys.
“They are on the side of war,” Putin said of the European powers. “We clearly see that all these changes are aimed at only one thing: completely blocking the peace process, making demands that are absolutely unacceptable to Russia.”
"If Europe suddenly wants to start a war with us, and if it does," Putin said, "then it would end for Europe so quickly that there would be no one in Europe to negotiate."
Putin also threatened to cut off Ukraine's access to the sea in response to drone attacks on Russian "secret fleet" tankers in the Black Sea.
As Putin spoke, Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner walked through Red Square, near the mausoleum of Soviet statesman Vladimir Lenin, along with the Russian president's special envoy for investments, Kirill Dmitriev. Witkoff and Kushner's meeting with Putin began tonight at the Kremlin.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking in Dublin, said that everything depends on the talks in Moscow.
"There will be no easy solutions... It is important that everything is fair and transparent, that there are no games behind Ukraine's back," he said.
Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine nearly four years ago, said the talks so far were not about a draft agreement, but rather a set of proposals that, as he said last week, "could be the basis for future agreements."
Putin said he was ready to talk about peace, but that if Ukraine rejected the agreement, Russian forces would advance further and seize more Ukrainian territory.
A Russian source said the Trump administration's efforts to find peace represent the best chance to end the war since talks with Kiev collapsed shortly after the Russian invasion in 2022.
A 28-point draft of the US peace plan, leaked to the public last week, has worried Ukrainian and European officials who said the proposals meet Moscow's main demands - on NATO, Russian control of a fifth of Ukraine and limits on the Ukrainian military.
European powers then came out with a counterproposal for peace, and at talks in Geneva, the US and Ukraine announced that they had developed an "updated and refined peace framework" to end the war.
Putin said today that Europe had excluded itself from peace talks, but is now trying to undermine Trump's efforts by putting forward proposals that it knows are unacceptable to Russia.
Key Russian demands include a promise that Ukraine will never join NATO, restrictions on the Ukrainian military, Russian control over the entire Donbas, recognition of Russian authority over the regions of Crimea, Donbas, Zaporozhye, and Kherson, as well as protection for the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine.
Ukraine says that would constitute capitulation and leave the country vulnerable to further Russian conquest, although Washington has also considered ten-year security guarantees for Kiev.
Today, at the start of the last session of his cabinet in 2025, Trump said that the war in Ukraine is "chaos" that "is not easy to resolve."
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