Ukraine has made Western-backed security guarantees a central demand in any settlement to prevent further Russian attacks. Work on those guarantees accelerated following a gathering of European leaders in the White House on Aug. 18, at which Trump pushed for a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin.
But frustrations have grown since then, with Moscow reluctant to commit to peace talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the day after the White House encounter that any summit would have to be prepared “step by step, gradually, starting from the expert level and then going through all the necessary stages.”
Moscow has also doubled down on its own demands, including that Kyiv cede more territory in eastern Ukraine. Zelenskyy had previously vowed that Ukraine would not hand over the eastern Donbas region, as it would provide Putin a springboard for a future invasion.