Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff said on Monday that a fourth round of trilateral peace negotiations between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States could take place before the end of this week, a disclosure that came amid sustained scepticism from Kyiv about Russia’s intentions after the most recent Geneva session produced no breakthrough on the territorial and security questions that have dominated and divided every round of talks since January.
“I think at the end of the week, this week,” Kyrylo Budanov told reporters in Kyiv when asked when the next session might be held. He described Russian negotiating conduct as “restrained, polite and professional” while acknowledging the wide gap that separates the two sides.
“It is no secret that negotiations are not easy, but we are definitely moving forward and approaching the moment when all sides will need to make final decisions, whether to continue this war or transition to peace,” the president’s office quoted him as saying.
Budanov also confirmed that a fresh prisoner of war exchange was expected this week and indicated it would surpass the 157 prisoners each side returned at the last exchange. He gave no specific figure.
The peace process that Budanov described as moving forward has, by most independent assessments, moved fitfully at best since it was formally launched in January. The first round of talks opened in Abu Dhabi on January 23 at Al Shati Palace. US special envoy Steve Witkoff described the two-day session as “very constructive,” and both sides agreed to meet again, but the discussions foundered on the opening question: what territorial formula could serve as the foundation for any settlement. Putin had told a US delegation in Moscow the previous day that without resolving the land question “according to the formula agreed upon in Anchorage,” a reference to the Trump-Putin summit held in Alaska in August 2025, there was “no point in hoping” for a deal.
The second Abu Dhabi round on February 4 and 5 produced the single most tangible result of the entire process to date: a prisoner of war exchange of 314 captives, 157 from each side, the first such swap in five months. The US and Russia also agreed to re-establish direct military-to-military communication for the first time since late 2021, a channel suspended months before the February 2022 invasion.
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On the core political questions, however, the February 4 meeting reached no agreement. Russia declined to support a renewed US-proposed moratorium on strikes against energy infrastructure, having previously allowed an earlier spring 2025 version of the same initiative to collapse amid mutual accusations of violations.
The third round moved to Geneva on February 17 and 18, with delegations from all three countries seated at a horseshoe-shaped table at a Swiss diplomatic facility, under the formal facilitation of Swiss Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis, who welcomed the parties in his country’s traditional role as neutral host. The session was described by Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council Secretary Rustem Umerov as focused on “practical issues and the mechanics of possible solutions.” The Russian delegation, led by presidential adviser Vladimir Medinsky, told state media that talks had been “difficult, but business-like.” Zelensky was more pointed, accusing Russia of seeking to “drag out negotiations that could already have reached the final stage” and expressing frustration with the gap between the diplomatic register and the continuing aerial bombardment.
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The substantive obstacles have not moved. Russia occupies approximately 20 percent of Ukrainian sovereign territory, including the Crimean peninsula annexed in 2014 and large portions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts seized or contested since 2022. Moscow is seeking formal Ukrainian withdrawal from parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions not yet fully under its military control, has threatened to take those areas by force if talks fail, and has resisted any framework for postwar security guarantees that would give the United States a binding role in deterring future Russian military action. Ukraine has rejected any agreement that cedes territory or leaves it without credible security backstops. Those positions have not been bridged in any of the three rounds held so far.
European powers have been present on the margins of the Geneva talks, delegations from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom were in Switzerland for bilateral meetings with Ukrainian and American counterparts, but have not been admitted to the three-way negotiating format. Zelensky has insisted consistently that Europe’s participation is “indispensable for the successful implementation” of any agreement that might emerge. That argument reflects a fundamental Ukrainian concern: that a bilateral US-Russia agreement crafted without European security guarantees could leave Kyiv exposed to future pressure from a Moscow whose military capacity, whatever the outcome of a ceasefire, will remain substantially intact.
The United States has set what Witkoff has described as a summer deadline for a settlement.
Trump, who campaigned on ending the war within 24 hours of taking office and has now passed the one-year mark of his second term without fulfilling that pledge, has maintained public optimism about the process while making no specific concession to Ukrainian territorial concerns. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, speaking on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference last week, said Russia was “not winning the war as some are thinking.”
The war itself has continued uninterrupted throughout the negotiating process. Zelensky noted during the Munich conference that Russia had launched more than 1,300 drones, 96 missiles, and over 1,400 guided aerial bombs in a single week. Ukraine, for its part, has continued long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries and military logistics targets. The front line, stretching approximately 1,250 kilometres across eastern Ukraine, has shifted only marginally in either direction over the past six months.
The next round of talks, if it proceeds as Budanov indicated, would be the fourth in five weeks. No venue or format had been confirmed as of Monday evening.