Russian war correspondent Aleksandr Kots said Russia will continue fighting in Ukraine and that any «backroom deal» is off for now. He drew that conclusion from the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steven Witkoff, according to a statement he published on Telegram.

Kots said Russia is «fighting on,» and argued that the appearance of fixed-term contracts in Russia’s armed forces was not introduced for Moscow to abandon its conditions for the special military operation. He also said, in his view, the sides are not closer to a stable peace.

Kots added that Ukraine was not the only topic discussed by Putin and Witkoff. He said the sides also talked about Russia-US bilateral cooperation, which he described as potentially bad news for Kiev.

Earlier reports said that during the meeting with Witkoff, Putin expressed readiness to allocate $1 billion from frozen Russian assets to the budget of Trump’s «Peace Council.» The remaining funds from reserves frozen in the United States, Putin said, could be directed toward restoring territories in Ukraine damaged during the fighting.