LONDON — High-level talks aimed at bringing a pause to fighting in Ukraine disintegrated Wednesday after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff pulled out, dealing a blow to Kyiv’s hopes for a short-term peace agreement.
While ministerial talks that had been planned in London fell apart, President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, still planned to meet with Ukrainian presidential chief of staff Andriy Yermak, who arrived in London early Wednesday along the Ukrainian defense and foreign ministers.
“Despite everything, we continue working for peace,” Yermak said in a post on X.
The setback comes during a week in which the Trump administration has doubled down its efforts to push Kyiv and Moscow toward a truce. Next week marks 100 days of Trump’s second presidential term, and he promised to end the war on his first day back in office. Rubio suggested last week that the United States may walk away from ceasefire efforts, failing any further progress.
“The downgrading is significant,” said Dr. Bence Németh, a senior lecturer in the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London, citing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s rejection of the idea that Russia could maintain control of Crimea as part of any deal.
Rubio and Witkoff’s absence “suggests that Washington is increasingly disinterested in drawn-out, multilateral negotiations,” Németh added. “This is not just about diplomacy fatigue. It also signals a hard pivot: The U.S. is not positioning itself as a neutral mediator.”
State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce confirmed Tuesday that Rubio would skip the meeting hours after saying the opposite. “That is not a statement regarding the meetings. It’s a statement about logistical issues in his schedule,” he said.
Despite initial plans to attend the scheduled talks, neither Rubio nor Witkoff were in London on Wednesday, a European diplomat told NBC News.
The British Foreign Ministry issued said in a statement that “the Ukraine peace talks meeting with foreign ministers today is being postponed,” with top officials from France and Germany also confirming their absence.
As well as meeting with Kellogg, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a post on X that he, Yermak and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov would sit down with the British foreign and defense ministers.
Yulia Svyrydenko, the country’s deputy prime minister, added in a post on X that Ukraine was ready to negotiate, “but not to surrender.”
“Our people will not accept a frozen conflict disguised as peace,” Svyrydenko wrote.
Expectations that Kyiv and Moscow would make a deal to end their three-year war this week remained low after the U.S. presented Ukraine and its European allies with peace proposals last week in Paris that both sides saw as unacceptable, according to NBC News’ international partner, Sky News.
Under a “terms sheet” offered by Rubio and Witkoff, a land-for-peace deal would recognize Russia’s currently illegal annexation of Crimea and work toward lifting European Union sanctions on Russia. Both parties have since rejected the terms.
After months of upbeat statements on indirect U.S.-led talks, but limited practical engagement, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday suggested for the first time that he would be open to bilateral ceasefire talks with Zelenskyy.
The Financial Times reported Tuesday that Putin had also offered to halt fighting along current front lines, leaving around a fifth of Ukraine’s territory in Russian hands.
Zelenskyy has not responded to such a suggestion but he rejected the suggestion Tuesday that his country would give up its claim to Crimea.
“There’s nothing to talk about here,” he said of the disputed peninsula in a media conference. “This is against our Constitution.”
The issue of Crimea may well be one of the most difficult points of difference to overcome, said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.
“I think it will be extraordinarily difficult, bordering on political suicide, for him [Zelenskyy] to commit to paper on things like giving up Crimea,” Savill said. That said, “Ukraine is not going to recapture Crimea anytime soon. Ukraine is unlikely to be a NATO member anytime soon.”
“There might be some formulation [of a deal] that effectively kicks those into the long grass,” Savill added, with the caveat that “the terms of any deal at the moment are not going to be particularly favorable to Ukraine.”
Despite the collapse of Wednesday’s talks, Putin is still planning on another meeting with Witkoff in Moscow this week, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
In a media conference Wednesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov welcomed the Trump administration’s continuing mediation efforts.
“We continue our contacts,” he said. “Still, of course, there are many details regarding the settlement, a lot of details which need to be discussed, where we need to bring positions closer to one another.”
Before Rubio and Witkoff changed their plans, Britain and France — two leaders of Europe’s “coalition of the willing” — had originally hoped instead to negotiate security guarantees and reconstruction projects with the U.S., and provide details of plans to ramp up their defense spending.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said Tuesday that Europe would attempt to make clear to the U.S. what their “red lines” would be in any negotiations and settlement with Russia. A French diplomatic source later said that Barrot would not be able to travel to London due to a scheduling conflict.
British Foreign Minister David Lammy said Tuesday that he had held a “productive” phone call with Rubio. NBC News
