Four Years Into Putin’s War, Ukraine Peace Push Is Stalling

Daniel Tannebaum, Partner at Oliver Wyman & Senior Fellow at Atlantic Council, discusses the Russia-Ukraine war, as it marks the end of its fourth year, and next steps in talks for peace.

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 US 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 US 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 US-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 US military assistance.

Moscow and Washington are effectively in a contest to see who’ll blink first in the negotiations led by US 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 US abandoning Ukraine. The president’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner plan to travel to Geneva this week for a new round of US-Iran talks on Thursday, a US official said.

The two US envoys will meet once again with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who has repeatedly stressed the possibility of a diplomatic solution despite Trump’s threats.

“I believe that still, there is a good chance to have a diplomatic solution which is based on a win-win game and a solution is at our reach,” Araghchi said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.

The ongoing talks have been punctuated by a massive US military buildup in the Middle East, renewed warnings of airstrikes from Trump and new US visa restrictions on Iranian officials over Tehran’s violent suppression of widespread domestic protests at the turn of the year.

Those protests were the original reason Trump gave for a potential US bombing campaign, but the president and other administration officials have offered conflicting public accounts of what they actually want from a new deal with Tehran.

China urged the US to act with restraint, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said in a regular press briefing on Tuesday, adding that an escalation “serves no one’s interests.” Some US officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have argued for a deal that includes Iran’s missile program, suppression of protests and support for proxy militant groups across the Middle East — including Yemen’s Houthis and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Others, including Trump, have said a narrower nuclear deal may be enough.

While Trump said Iran had 10 to 15 days to agree to a deal, he may also decide to defy his own time frame, as he did when he ordered a previous round of US strikes in June 2025. He claimed at the time that “key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

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