There have been several rounds of peace talks to end the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war since it began with Russia's invasion in February 2022. These negotiations follow the Minsk agreements during the War in Donbas (2014–2022). Russia's president Vladimir Putin seeks recognition of all occupied land as Russian, for Russia to be given all of the regions it claims but does not fully occupy, guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO, curtailment of Ukraine's military, and the lifting of sanctions against Russia. Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy seeks a ceasefire, full withdrawal of Russian troops, the return of prisoners and kidnapped Ukrainian children, prosecution of Russian leaders for war crimes, and security guarantees to prevent further Russian aggression.
The first meeting between Russian and Ukrainian officials was held four days after the invasion began, on 28 February 2022, in Belarus, and ended without result. Later rounds of talks took place in March 2022 on the Belarus–Ukraine border and in Antalya, Turkey. Negotiations in Turkey proposed that Ukraine would abandon plans to join NATO and have limits placed on its military, while having security guarantees from Western countries, and not being required to recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea. Negotiations halted due to disagreements over key points, Russia's proposed veto on Ukraine's defense, doubts about Russia's sincerity, and the Bucha massacre. The negotiations did not deal with borders or territory. In November 2022, Ukraine presented a 10-point peace plan, which was rejected by Russia.
Renewed negotiations began in 2025 after Donald Trump became president of the United States. The Trump administration's formulated peace plans have been generally favorable towards Russia, but they have been rejected by both Russia and Ukraine. European countries have been more aligned with Ukrainian proposals, and have planned for a ceasefire guarded by a "coalition of the willing" with troops in Ukraine. Since March 2025, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy has been proposing an unlimited unconditional ceasefire. Russian president Putin has refused these calls for a ceasefire, saying Russia will continue its war until its demands are met.
Background
Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom are signatories to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum political agreement, providing security assurances to Ukraine. China and France gave somewhat weaker individual assurances in separate documents. Russia reaffirmed this assurance in 2009. After the Russian occupation of Crimea began in 2014, Putin claimed that the Revolution of Dignity had created a new political entity and any prior agreement with Ukraine was therefore void.
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has repeatedly engineered frozen conflicts to block the expansion of NATO or the European Union into the former Soviet sphere of influence. Conflicts are deemed "frozen" when fighting has stopped but no political resolution has been achieved. In 2014, Russia orchestrated separatist movements in Ukraine, and Russian proxy forces began the Donbas war. After Ukraine recovered significant territory up to August 2014, Russia intervened with conventional forces, leading to negotiated ceasefires through the Minsk agreements of 2014 and 2015. These ceasefires had potential to freeze the conflict, but sporadic offensives by Russia-backed separatists continued. Although Russia was a party to the Minsk agreements, it later denied any obligations, claiming to have only been a mediator between Ukraine and separatist forces. In total, according to military analysts, Russia has broken 190 agreements signed with Ukraine and the international community.
In the lead-up to the invasion, Russia's president Vladimir Putin repeatedly attacked Ukraine's right to exist and referred to Ukraine as "historically Russian lands". In his July 2021 essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", he claimed there is "no historical basis" for the "idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians". On 24 February 2022, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine as an escalation of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.
Negotiating positions
Russia
Putin outlined Russia's terms for a ceasefire and negotiations in June 2024. He said that Russia must be allowed to keep all the land it occupies, and be handed all of the provinces that it claims but does not fully control. He also said that Ukraine must officially end its plans to join NATO. Further, he demanded that the international community recognize Russia's annexations and lift their sanctions against it.
Shortly before the invasion, Russia demanded an international treaty to bar Ukraine from ever joining NATO but also withdrawal of NATO forces from its own eastern member states. This was rejected by NATO as it would go against its "open-door" policy and the principle of self-determination. NATO offered to improve communication with Russia and discuss missile placements and military exercises, as long as Russia withdrew troops from Ukraine's borders.
Russia's demands at the start of the invasion included recognition of Russia's annexation of Crimea, recognition of the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic as independent states, as well as "demilitarization" and "denazification" of Ukraine, but did not clearly say what these terms meant. Russian propaganda falsely claimed that Ukraine's government were neo-Nazis carrying out "genocide" in the Donbas. An editorial "What Russia Should Do with Ukraine", published in Russian state media, explained "denazification" as eradication of Ukrainian national identity. Genocide scholar Eugene Finkel said the document was an admission of intent to commit genocide against Ukrainians. It is unclear to what extent the editorial reflected official policy, but Ukrainian-Canadian diplomat Roman Waschuk said that the appearance of the editorial around the same time as the Bucha massacre made negotiations much harder.
In September 2022, Reuters reported that Putin's envoy on Ukraine Dmitry Kozak had struck a provisional deal that would satisfy Russia's demand for Ukraine to stay out of NATO, but the plan was rejected by Putin who preferred a full-scale military invasion. After Russia declared it had annexed four regions of Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that these additional annexations must be recognized before any negotiations. In April 2023, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that he wanted any negotiations to focus on creating a "new world order" to counter the hegemony of the United States. In January 2024, Putin again made statements which suggested, according to the Institute for the Study of War, that his "maximalist objectives in Ukraine" remained unchanged, "which are tantamount to full Ukrainian and Western surrender". He again called for the overthrow of the Ukrainian government.
In June 2025, Putin declared that Russians and Ukrainians are "one people" and therefore, "all of Ukraine is ours".
Ukraine
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy proposed in November 2022 a 10-point peace plan, consisting of:
Two months before the invasion, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba dismissed the idea that declaring neutrality would prevent Russian aggression. He noted that Ukraine was already a neutral country in 2014 when Russia occupied Crimea and invaded the Donbas. In negotiations during March and April 2022, Ukraine was willing to consider a neutral status—wherein Ukraine would not join any military alliances or host forces of other nations on its territory—if it received security guarantees from its European allies. Reacting to Russian attacks on civilian targets later that year, Kuleba said, "There can be no 'neutrality' in the face of such mass war crimes."
During the early negotiations in March 2022, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy said there could be no peace deal without a ceasefire and Russian troop withdrawal. In August 2022, Zelenskyy said that he would not agree to a ceasefire that would freeze the conflict indefinitely with Russia occupying 22% of Ukraine: "We explained that there will be no Minsk-3, Minsk-5, or Minsk-7. We will not play these games, we have lost part of our territories this way ... it is a trap". In September 2022, after Russia proclaimed it had annexed large swathes of Ukraine, Zelenskyy signed NATO application papers. Ukraine has sought security guarantees in the meantime, but there is no consensus within NATO about such an arrangement. In June 2023, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine was not ready to negotiate with Russian representatives unless Russia withdrew its troops. Since early 2025, Zelenskyy has called for an unconditional ceasefire and negotiations.
Early negotiations (February–April 2022)
Russia and Ukraine started peace negotiations in Belarus on 28 February 2022, four days after the start of the invasion. A second and third round of talks took place on 3 and 7 March 2022 in Belarus. A fourth and fifth round were held on 10 and 14 March in Antalya, Turkey.
Initially, Russia demanded Ukraine's surrender. However, as Russia's position on the battlefield worsened, its negotiating terms became less demanding. The Russians failed in their attempt to seize Kyiv, taking heavy casualties and being forced to retreat. After this, the Russians were ready to discuss the status of Crimea.
Deputy Kremlin Chief of Staff, Dmitry Kozak, said in 2022 that he had negotiated an agreement with Ukraine within a few days of the invasion. This settlement would have ended hostilities in exchange for guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO. The agreement was however blocked by Putin, who "expanded his objectives to include annexing swathes of Ukrainian territory". A Kremlin spokesman denied the story. In December 2025 New York Times published a more detailed description of the events of 2022, in which Kozak was categorically against full-scale invasion on Ukraine, realizing the scale of resistance Russian army will face there. He was however sidetracked by Putin for what he perceived as disobedience, when Kozak called representatives of the Ukrainian government on 25 February trying to reach a ceasefire while Putin insisted he will "only accept Ukraine's surrender".
Belarus and Antalya peace talks
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko agreed on 27 February that a Ukrainian delegation would meet with Russian officials in Belarus, near the Ukrainian border, without preconditions. It was reported that Lukashenko assured Zelenskyy that all planes, helicopters, and missiles on Belarusian territory would remain on the ground during the negotiations.
On 28 February, talks started in Liaskavičy near the Belarus-Ukraine border, with Ukrainians including Davyd Arakhamia, Oleksii Reznikov and Mykhailo Podolyak, and Russians including Vladimir Medinsky. Ukrainian president Zelenskyy's office stated that his priorities were an immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine. It concluded with no agreement.
On 3 March, the second round of peace talks began in Kamyanyuki, Belarus, near the Polish border. Both sides agreed to open humanitarian corridors for evacuating civilians. Russia's demands were Ukraine's recognition of Russian-occupied Crimea, independence for separatist-controlled Luhansk and Donetsk, and "de-militarisation" and "de-Nazification". Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba stated that while his country was ready for talks to resume, Russia's demands had not changed.
Zelenskyy called for Putin to "sit down with me at the negotiating table. But not from 30 meters away, like with Macron and Scholz. I don't bite. What are you afraid of?". This was referring to the long table Putin uses for meetings. On 5 March, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett flew to Moscow and held three hours of meetings with Putin, then flew to Germany and held meetings with German chancellor Olaf Scholz. Bennett spoke in advance with Zelenskyy, who had previously asked for his help mediating. He also coordinated with the US, France and Germany. According to Al Monitor, the meetings were instigated by Scholz who made a brief visit to Israel on 3 March and held a long one-on-one meeting with Bennett, which produced the mediation idea.
On 6 March, Ukrainian official Denys Kireyev was found dead after being accused of committing 'treason' and working for Russia. Barely a week after attending the first round of peace talks, images of Kireyev's corpse began circulating.
A third round of negotiations began on 7 March in Kamyanyuki, Belarus, while Russia continued to attack Ukraine. Dmitry Peskov restated Moscow's demands, that Ukraine should agree to change its constitution to enshrine neutrality, accept that Crimea was Russian territory, and recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states; he claimed that Russia was ready to halt military operations "in a moment" if Kyiv agreed to these conditions. Ukrainian negotiator and advisor to the president Mykhailo Podoliak tweeted that "there were some small positive shifts regarding logistics of humanitarian corridors."