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President Vladimir Putin accepted some U.S. proposals aimed at ending the war in Ukraine and rejected others but that Russia was ready to meet U.S. negotiators as many times as it took to reach an agreement, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was speaking after talks in Moscow between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner went into the early hours of Wednesday morning, with a Kremlin aide saying afterwards that "compromises have not yet been found."
Asked if it would be correct to say that Putin had rejected the U.S. proposals, Peskov said that it would not.
"A direct exchange of views took place yesterday for the first time," Peskov said. "Some things were accepted, some things were marked as unacceptable - this is a normal working process of finding a compromise."
Peskov said that Russia was grateful to Trump for his efforts but that the Kremlin would not be giving a running commentary on discussions with the United States as publicity was unlikely to be constructive.
"Work is currently being carried out at a working expert level," Peskov said.
"It is at the expert level that certain results should be achieved that will then become the basis for contacts at the highest level."
A leaked set of 28 U.S. draft peace proposals emerged in November, alarming Ukrainian and European officials who said they bowed to Moscow's main demands.
European powers then came up with a counter-proposal, and at talks in Geneva, the U.S. and Ukraine said they had created an "updated and refined peace framework" to end the war.
Putin on Tuesday said European powers were trying to sink the peace talks by proposing ideas which were absolutely unacceptable to Russia.
Putin's foreign policy aide, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters after the Witkoff talks that Moscow had previously received a 27-point set of proposals and then four additional documents which were discussed with Witkoff.
Putin last week said that the U.S. and Ukraine had divided up the initial proposals into four components. The exact contents have not been disclosed.
The Turkish Defence Ministry has voiced its support for recent military operations by Syrian government forces against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which enjoy the support of the United States.
Tens of thousands of users were left unable to access Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Friday, with outages reported across multiple countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Saturday (17 January) that concerns over security in Greenland should be addressed within the framework of NATO, describing a ground military intervention as highly unlikely.
Ashley St. Clair, mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, has filed a lawsuit against Musk’s company xAI, alleging that its AI tool Grok generated explicit images of her, including one portraying her as underage.
The Kremlin has welcomed recent signals from several major European capitals suggesting a renewed openness to dialogue with Moscow, calling the shift a “positive evolution” in Europe’s stance towards Russia.
The European Union faced calls to implement a never-before-used range of economic countermeasures known as the 'Anti-Coercion Instrument' as part of the bloc's response U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on European countries in connection with Greenland.
Six people have been killed after a massive fire tore through a shopping centre in Pakistan’s largest city, Karachi, authorities said, as firefighters battled through the night to contain the blaze.
The world is entering a more unstable and fragmented phase as global cooperation declines and rivalry between major powers intensifies, the World Economic Forum has warned.
The Trump administration has denied a report that countries would be required to pay $1bn to join a proposed U.S.-backed peace initiative, after Bloomberg News said a draft charter set out a membership fee.
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