4 years into Putin's war, Ukraine peace push is stalling

President Donald Trump’s efforts to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are stalling with peace talks deadlocked and the fighting largely at a stalemate after four years of war.

Allies say the U.S. is pushing for a deal before Trump hosts the 250th anniversary celebrations of American independence on July 4. But there’s no indication that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to reach an agreement that doesn’t grant his central demands, according to senior European and NATO officials.

The talks have already blown through several deadlines and even some U.S. officials admit privately that they see no signs Putin is willing to budge from his maximalist positions, the people said.

The White House didn’t respond to a Bloomberg News request for comment.

Russia’s full-scale invasion that began on Feb. 24, 2022 reaches its four-year mark on Tuesday with no sign of ending any time soon. That’s a far cry from Putin’s initial plan for his special military operation to remove the leadership in Kyiv within days.

While Trump returned to the presidency in January 2025 pledging to bring a swift end to Europe’s worst conflict since World War II, more than a year of U.S.-led diplomacy is foundering on the question of Russian demands for territory in eastern Ukraine and the issue of control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.

Three rounds of trilateral talks so far this year in Abu Dhabi and Geneva have failed to deliver a resolution. Ukraine’s European allies have been largely sidelined from the negotiations, even as they’re mostly funding weapons purchases to aid Kyiv’s defense after Trump wound down U.S. military assistance.

Moscow and Washington are effectively in a contest to see who’ll blink first in the negotiations led by U.S. special envoy Steven Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, said a senior NATO official familiar with the discussions. That would mean either Russia giving in on some of its red lines, which include full control of the lands in the eastern Donbas region or the U.S. abandoning Ukraine.

While talks between the three sides remain constructive, they are effectively deadlocked, the person said, asking not to be identified discussing sensitive issues.

Trump has repeatedly voiced frustration with the slow pace of negotiations, often oscillating between criticizing Putin and pressing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to make concessions.

“America has been very clear that they want this war to end,” the European Union’s top foreign policy official, Kaja Kallas, told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday. “So if you want this war to end, then we should really do everything to put the pressure on the aggressor.”

Despite massive military casualties and deepening strains on Russia’s economy, Putin has given no sign he’s willing to roll back on demands that include territory his forces have failed to conquer in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.

Moscow is also refusing to cede control of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that it has occupied since early in the invasion.

“Russia is fighting for its future,” Putin told military officers at an award ceremony in the Kremlin on Monday to mark the country’s Defender of the Fatherland public holiday.

Ukraine is holding firm, too. Relentless Russian missile and drone attacks targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure failed in the attempt to freeze the population into submission during one of the coldest winters in years.

“My message to Putin is simple: I am ready to meet,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD, according to a transcript published on Monday. “We must end the war. Period.”

Ukraine rejects Russian demands to withdraw from its fortified areas of eastern Donetsk and has suggested a ceasefire along existing frontlines. The U.S. is proposing to establish a free economic zone in the area along with security guarantees for Ukraine against any future Russian attack.

There’s been no final framework on the fate of the nuclear plant, though the U.S. has said the sharing of power will be a critical part of any agreement. While the U.S. has proposed a three-way split, Kyiv rejects any sharing with Russia though it has said the Americans would be free to divide their share with Moscow.

One concern among Kyiv’s allies is that Putin may agree to a ceasefire that would allow Trump to claim success in ending the war, while Russia continued a campaign of sabotage, hybrid warfare or election interference aimed at destabilizing Ukraine, according to European diplomats familiar with the issue, who asked not to be identified because the matter isn’t public.

“As long as Putin is in power, Russia isn’t paralyzed by widespread protests, and there is at least some money left in the budget for weapons, the war will continue,” Tatiana Stanovaya, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said in a Feb. 18 article. “The Kremlin will not make significant concessions even if faced with a protracted financial and economic crisis.”

Trump has expressed interest in joint U.S.-Russia business deals if the war is brought to an end. The Kremlin has also set out proposals for wide-ranging economic partnership with the Trump administration, while Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev has pitched projects he claimed are worth more than $14 trillion, or almost six times the size of Russia’s gross domestic product, once sanctions over the war are lifted.

Russian territorial gains have amounted to less than 1% of Ukraine’s land area over the last three years, according to data from DeepState, a conflict mapping service that cooperates with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.

Meanwhile, wide swathes of the frontline have been transformed into areas dominated by drone warfare, making it very difficult for conventional troops to stage offensives to gain more land.

“The strategy of war is now aimed not so much at seizing territory, but depleting enemy resources,” former Ukrainian army commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi, who’s now Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.K., told a meeting at London’s Chatham House think tank on Monday.

Ukrainian army commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi visited the southern front line and described the situation as difficult, according to a post on Telegram on Monday. His forces have regained control of nearly 400 sq km (about 154 sq miles) of territory since the end of January, he said.

Ukraine also inflicted more battlefield losses last month than Moscow was able to replace, according to assessments from Western officials.

“We’ve seen a casualty uptick which is disproportionate in scale,” U.K. Armed Forces Minister Al Carns said. “And some of the economic situation in Russia is starting to become quite precarious, especially as we move into summer.”

Witkoff told Fox News in an interview Feb. 21 that he and Kushner were hopeful of “good news in the coming weeks” on proposals for a peace deal that he said could bring Putin and Zelenskyy to a summit, possibly alongside Trump.

“It really is a silly war,” Witkoff said. “They are fighting over, they are arguing this territory. Everyone throws the word dignity around, but what does dignity get you if you have that amount of killing there?”

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—With assistance from Patrick Donahue, Oliver Crook, Maxim Edwards, Jenny Leonard, Daryna Krasnolutska, Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Kate Sullivan, Ellen Milligan and Julius Domoney.