Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev said Russia and the United States are holding “constructive” talks in Florida that will continue on 21 December.
“The discussions are going on constructively. They started earlier and will continue today and will also continue tomorrow,” Dmitriev told reporters on the sidelines of the talks near Miami on 20 December.
All parties involved in the U.S.-brokered peace process have regularly referred to “progress” or made other such statements without providing details of the talks.
The White House has not yet commented on the meeting.
Washington is scheduled to be represented by US envoy Steve Whitkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had previously said he might attend the talks, but details were not disclosed.
Trump is spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, about 110 kilometres north of Miami, but was not expected to attend the talks.
At the meeting, US representatives are expected to provide Moscow with the results of the latest round of talks with Ukraine and Europe.
Prior to the talks with Russia, the US side held a meeting with the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, Rustem Umerov.
In recent weeks, the US has been trying again to reach a peace agreement between Moscow and Kiev.
The week-long talks resulted in a document that is more acceptable to Kiev, but there are several contentious issues, particularly regarding territory and security guarantees.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the issue of possible compromises on territorial issues in the peace plan should be decided by the Ukrainian people “in the format of elections or a referendum”. To this, the Kremlin said that “the entire Donbass is Russian”.
US President Donald Trump said the other day that an agreement to end Russia’s war in Ukraine is “closer than ever”.
On 18 December, he noted that he believed the talks were “getting closer to something”, but said that “Ukraine must act quickly” because “when they delay too long, Russia changes its mind”.