US President Donald Trump met with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky and said the two were "perhaps very close" to an agreement to end the war with Russia, writes "Reuters".
However, they gave few details about how the most contentious issues between the warring parties, namely territorial concessions and security guarantees for Ukraine, would be resolved.
Here are some of the main stumbling blocks after weeks of intense diplomacy:
The territorial dispute
Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022, controls about 116,000 sq km, or about 19.2% of Ukrainian territory.
This is approximately 1.2% more than three years ago, according to pro-Ukrainian maps. Russian forces advanced in 2025 at the fastest pace since 2022.
Russia claims that Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - together known as Donbass - plus Zaporizhia and Kherson regions are now legally part of Russia. Most of the international community maintains that they were illegally annexed.
But Russia has not achieved its primary goal of seizing all of Donbas and today reiterated its demands that Ukraine withdraw from the Donetsk region it still holds - about 5,000 sq km - if it wants peace.
The Kremlin has warned that if Kiev does not make a deal, it will lose more territory.
Kiev rejects the idea of giving up territory it has defended for nearly four years, saying it wants the fighting on the current front lines to stop.
Both Trump and Zelensky indicated yesterday that the future of Donbas had not been decided, although the US president said that discussions were "moving in the right direction".
Under its original 28-point peace plan, the United States, seeking compromise, offered a free economic zone if Ukraine left the area, although it remains It is unclear how such a zone would work in practice.
Russia does not control all of Zaporizhia and Kherson regions and has seized small parts of Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
The Russian newspaper "Kommersant" reported that Putin had said he might be open to exchanging some of the territory controlled by Russian forces elsewhere in Ukraine for all of Donbas.
How would security guarantees work?
Ukraine, wary of failed assurances from allies in the past, says it needs solid security guarantees to prevent another Russian attack.
Today, Zelensky said a draft peace framework to end Russia's war would provide for U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine for 15 years. He added that he had asked Trump to provide guarantees for up to 50 years.
Trump wants Europe to take the brunt of providing any guarantees, albeit with US support. What form they will take, however, remains unclear. Moscow, for example, has said that any deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine would be unacceptable.
Russia has also demanded limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and protection for Russian-speaking and Orthodox believers in Ukraine, and argues that Ukraine must be neutral.
Kiev argues that the Russian-speaking population is protected and that Ukraine complies with EU law. Under Ukraine's 20-point peace proposal, the country would keep its armed forces at their current strength of 800,000. mutual defense clause in NATO's founding treaty.
And what will happen to Russia's money and frozen assets?
The initial US proposals state that Russia, under Western sanctions over the war, would be reintegrated into the global economy and invited to be part of the G8.
In its initial proposals, the United States said it would enter into a long-term agreement with Russia to develop "energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data centers, rare earth mining projects in the Arctic, and other mutually beneficial corporate opportunities".
In December, European Union leaders agreed to lend Ukraine €90 billion to finance its defense against Russia over the next two years.
Nuclear, Elections, and Business
Peaceful action could lead to an agreement between Russia and the United States to resume talks on controlling strategic nuclear weapons.
The future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is located in Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory, is unclear.
There has been media speculation that Russia could offer American companies stakes in its vast natural resources sector.
Washington has floated the idea of holding elections in Ukraine. Putin says the Kiev leadership has lost legitimacy after refusing to hold elections when Zelensky’s term expired. Kiev, in turn, says it cannot hold elections while it is under martial law and defending its territory from Russia.