The U.S. will hold talks Wednesday in London with Ukrainian and European officials as President Donald Trump pushes for a deal to halt Russia’s full-scale invasion.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg are expected to meet with the foreign ministers and national security advisers from France, Germany, the UK and Ukraine, people familiar with the matter said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

“Ukraine, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States — we are ready to move forward as constructively as possible, just as we have done before, to achieve an unconditional ceasefire, followed by the establishment of a real and lasting peace,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday on the platform X after a phone call with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. “An unconditional ceasefire must be the first step toward peace, and this Easter made it clear that it is Russia’s actions that are prolonging the war.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Witkoff, who has already held three rounds of talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is expected to travel to Moscow this week, Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov was cited as saying by the Interfax news service on Tuesday.

The London gathering is intended as a follow-up to meetings in Paris last week, where the U.S. shared proposals to enable a ceasefire and peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine. The U.S. is prepared to ease sanctions on Moscow and to recognize Russia’s control over the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea as part of a deal, Bloomberg previously reported.

The U.S. proposal would effectively freeze the front line in the war that’s now in its fourth year, with Russia retaining de facto control of most of the other territory its forces currently occupy in Ukraine’s east and south. Ukraine’s aim of joining NATO would be off the table, too, though any agreement would have to include security guarantees for Kyiv to ensure the deal holds, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

Putin seized Crimea in 2014, then staged a referendum to justify the Kremlin’s takeover. The U.S. and the European Union responded with sanctions, and Russia’s annexation of the peninsula hasn’t gained international recognition. A U.S. decision to recognize Russia’s occupation of Crimea would potentially undermine the international order established after World War II that opposed one country taking territory from another by force.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly said he won’t cede territory to Russia.

“There’s a very good chance” that Ukraine and Russia can reach a deal this week, Trump told reporters on Monday at the White House. Good meetings have been held on Russia and Ukraine, he said.

Trump declared during his election campaign that he’d bring the war to a rapid end as president. On Friday, he signaled the U.S. may walk away from efforts to end the war if a deal can’t be found soon to halt Russia’s February 2022 invasion. While Trump didn’t put a deadline on it, Rubio said Washington needed to see in “a matter of days” whether a deal was “doable in the short term.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday it had resumed military operations after the expiration of a 30-hour pause for Easter announced by Putin. Zelenskyy described the brief halt as a Kremlin publicity stunt and called on Russia to agree to extend the truce to 30 days as a first step toward a peace deal.

Putin said Monday in televised comments that he’s willing to consider a proposal by Kyiv to avoid strikes on civilian targets and is open to bilateral talks with Ukraine on the issue.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier in the day that Russia welcomed the Trump administration’s stance ruling out membership for Ukraine in the NATO military alliance. “Of course, we’re satisfied about this,” he said.

Each side has accused the other of breaching a 30-day moratorium on attacks against energy infrastructure that Russia said had run out on Friday. Russia said it would only accept a proposal for a Black Sea truce negotiated at U.S.-led talks in Saudi Arabia last month in return for concessions on easing sanctions against a key state bank. Ukraine said it backed the ceasefire unconditionally.

Putin has made clear that he won’t agree to a full truce until there is progress toward a final peace deal that meets Russia’s war demands.

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(With assistance from Kate Sullivan.)

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