Latest round of talks between Ukraine and US conclude as Trump seeks swift peace
The latest round of talks between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and US envoys have ended as they and European allies seek an end to Russia’s nearly four-year war.
Ukraine faces Washington’s pressure to swiftly accept a US-brokered peace deal in the face of an increasingly assertive Moscow.
There were no immediate comments on the talks in Berlin that involved US president Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as European officials, and which lasted roughly 90 minutes after a five-hour session on Sunday.
The US government said in a social media post on Mr Witkoff’s account after Sunday’s meeting that “a lot of progress was made”.
The search for possible compromises has run into major obstacles, including control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, which is mostly occupied by Russian forces.
Mr Zelensky has now expressed readiness to drop Ukraine’s bid to join the Nato military alliance if the US and other western nations give Kyiv security guarantees similar to those offered to Nato members.
But Ukraine continued to reject the US push for ceding territory to Russia. Russian president Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw its forces from the part of Donetsk region still under its control among the key conditions for peace.
Mr Zelensky’s itinerary on Monday also included meetings with German and other European leaders.
“The issue of security in particular will ultimately determine whether this war actually comes to a standstill and whether it flares up again,” a spokesperson for German chancellor Friedrich Merz, Stefan Kornelius, told reporters.
The Russian president has cast Ukraine’s bid to join Nato as a major threat to Moscow’s security and a reason for launching the full-scale invasion in February 2022. The Kremlin has demanded that Ukraine renounce the bid for alliance membership as part of any prospective peace settlement.
Mr Zelensky emphasised that any western security assurances would need to be legally binding and supported by the US Congress.
The Kremlin said on Monday that it expected to be updated on the Berlin talks by the US side.
Asked whether the negotiations could be over by Christmas, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said trying to predict a potential time frame for a peace deal was a “thankless task”.
“I can only speak for the Russian side, for President Putin,” Mr Peskov said.
“He is open to peace, to a serious peace and serious decisions. He is absolutely not open to any tricks aimed at stalling for time.”
Mr Putin has denied plans to attack any European allies.
Meanwhile, the new head of the MI6 spy agency was set to warn how Mr Putin’s determination to export chaos around the world was rewriting the rules of conflict and creating new security challenges.
I had a good meeting with the President of Finland, @alexstubb. There is a great deal of work underway on the diplomatic track right now, and we discussed its results. We also coordinated our joint positions ahead of today’s meetings with partners in Berlin and agreed on the next… pic.twitter.com/QxuyQURdjX
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 15, 2025
Blaise Metreweli was using her first public speech as chief of the UK foreign intelligence service to say that Britain faced increasingly unpredictable and interconnected threats, with an emphasis on “aggressive, expansionist” Russia.
Russia fired 153 drones of various types at Ukraine overnight Sunday into Monday, according to Ukraine’s air force, which said 133 drones were neutralised, while 17 more hit their targets.
In Russia, the defence ministry said on Monday that forces destroyed 130 Ukrainian drones overnight. An additional 16 drones were destroyed between 7am and 8am local time.
Eighteen drones were shot down over Moscow itself, the defence ministry said. Flights were temporarily halted at the city’s Domodedovo and Zhukovsky airports as part of safety measures, officials said.
Damage details and casualty figures were not immediately available.
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