Moscow refused the first mediated ceasefire proposal to reach it in months, and refused it twice over. On 13 August Ukraine passed Russia an offer of a mutual halt to attacks on civilian ships and port infrastructure in the Black Sea, routed through an intermediary no account names; it followed Turkey's own proposal, conveyed to both capitals, of a moratorium on strikes against merchant shipping. Within a day Russia's Foreign Ministry said it saw "no grounds for half-measures that merely grant the Kyiv regime temporary breathing space", denied having received any formalised Turkish appeal, ruled out reviving the 2022-23 Black Sea Initiative, and restated its unchanged terms: elimination of NATO's eastward expansion and Ukraine's accession to it, plus guarantees for Russian speakers in territory Kyiv holds. The same ministry spent the week welcoming visitors. Sergei Lavrov said Putin was ready to receive the US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner again — "the question is, what will they bring?" — a day after his deputy said Moscow would host them once their plans became clearer. No trip had taken place, and nothing has convened between the warring sides since the Geneva round in February. What moved was around the table rather than at it. Britain, France and Germany began assembling a joint format to represent Europe in any settlement, on the stated fear that Washington and Moscow would otherwise reach one over their heads; Britain's Foreign Office called the discussion speculative. A confidential July meeting in Vienna between former British, French, German and Russian officials surfaced. And the clearest exercise of leverage all month ran towards Kyiv rather than Moscow: Ukraine halted its drone campaign against tankers at Novorossiysk after a request from Vice President JD Vance.
The Whole Story
Both governments say they are ready to talk. Neither has sat down with the other since February 2026, when a US-brokered round in Geneva broke up ten days before American strikes on Iran pulled Washington's attention elsewhere. Everything since has been conducted at one remove — through envoys, spokesmen, intermediaries and would-be hosts — and the distance between the two positions has not measurably closed.
The dispute is not over whether to negotiate but over what negotiating would mean. Russia's conditions have been stable for two years and are restated whenever they are asked for: withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson they still hold; abandonment of NATO accession; and, in the Foreign Ministry's standing formula, elimination of the war's "root causes", which it defines as the alliance's eastward expansion and the rights of Russian speakers in territory Kyiv controls. In July 2026 Moscow hardened further, withdrawing an earlier offer to return occupied slivers of Sumy and Kharkiv. Ukraine's position is that a ceasefire should freeze the current front line and that any settlement needs security guarantees credible enough to survive it; Kyiv has said repeatedly that it will not cede territory it holds. Both sides therefore profess readiness while attaching conditions the other treats as surrender.
As the principals have stalled, the number of parties trying to convene them has grown. The United States runs the only channel both capitals acknowledge, through the envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — though the one instrument of pressure it has visibly applied this summer was applied to Kyiv, when Vice President JD Vance asked Ukraine to stop striking tankers at Novorossiysk and Ukraine stopped. Turkey has pressed for a maritime moratorium. Kazakhstan's president asked Putin in public to freeze the war. Britain, France and Germany have begun assembling a format of their own, less to mediate than to avoid being settled over. Beneath all of it runs a track of unofficial contacts — former officials meeting in Vienna and Baku under private convenors — which keeps a line open without committing anyone to anything.
What remains unresolved is whether any of it converges. The narrower proposals — a mutual halt on attacks on Black Sea shipping, a moratorium on strikes against merchant vessels — test whether two sides that cannot agree a full settlement can agree a partial one, and so far both have been refused. Zelenskyy's claim that trilateral negotiations will be held in the autumn of 2026 stands on the record with a resolution date of 30 November, and no session with delegations from all three governments has convened since he made it. The question the record keeps returning to is the one Lavrov put plainly in August: not whether anyone will come, but what they will bring.