Mike Baker

Ukraine's delegation was led by Zelensky's chief of staff and included his national security adviser Rustem Umarov, along with the country's military chief of staff and other senior presidential advisers.

Russia's delegation was led by Admiral Igor Kostykov, the chief of Russian military intelligence.

According to U.S.

officials, the groundwork for these negotiations was laid early last week.

As we discussed on the PDB, it began with Trump meeting with Zelensky and Davos, followed just hours later by a four-hour meeting in Moscow between Russian President Putin, Witkow and Kushner.

But that Moscow meeting also underscored the ceiling on this process.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov described the discussions as extremely frank, saying a lasting settlement would be unlikely without resolving territorial issues, according to what he called the formula agreed in Anchorage, a reference to the August Putin Trump meeting in Alaska.

Ushakov and Putin made clear that without addressing territory, there's no point in hoping for a settlement.

You may remember that ahead of the Alaska summit, the Kremlin demanded Ukrainian forces withdraw from parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, which are not occupied by Russia.

That's a demand that Kiev consistently rejects.

After being briefed by his negotiating team, Zelensky said the talks again focused on possible parameters for ending the war and emphasized U.S.

oversight as a critical component of any agreement.

Still, there was no rush to declare success.

A Ukrainian official cautioned that while some progress had been made, it remains unclear whether Putin is prepared to give his negotiators any authority to strike a deal in the next meeting.

So, in short, it's still too early to judge what tangible progress came out of the talks.

That same Ukrainian official said that if the next trilateral round moves things further along, discussions could eventually shift to Moscow or Kyiv, venues that have not hosted negotiations in years.

And this is where the practical limits of the talks became clear.

Zelensky has said any territorial decision would ultimately have to be made by Ukrainians themselves, either through an election or a referendum.

A December poll showed roughly 75% of Ukrainians oppose any peace deal that includes withdrawal from the Donbass without firm security guarantees.

All right, coming up in today's Back of the Brief, Trump says a secret weapon was crucial to the raid that captured Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro.