Trump has said he wants to see Russian leader Vladimir Putin meet with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss ending the war, but the Kremlin has been reluctant to engage directly with Zelensky.

Lavrov referred to Zelensky as the “de facto head of the [Ukrainian] regime” last weekend in an interview with NBC News. He told the host that Russia is “ready to meet with him” but said signing an agreement with someone they view as “illegitimate” would be a different matter.

Trump, in responding to those comments at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, said, “Everybody’s posturing, it’s all bull****. OK? Everybody’s posturing.”

His frustration comes as it’s been nearly two weeks since his historic summit with Putin in Alaska at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, with little progress to show for it since then. Trump said before and after the meeting that one of his goals was securing a Putin-Zelensky bilateral meeting that he would be willing to attend if needed.

A couple of days after the meeting, Trump met with Zelensky and seven other European leaders at the White House.

Even as Lavrov raised doubts about their willingness to make a deal with Zelensky, Witkoff said on Tuesday that they have shared an offer to end the war, though he acknowledged it “may not be something that the Ukrainians can take.”

Witkoff said the deal “involves Donetsk,” one of the four regions in Ukraine that Russia illegitimately annexed in September 2022. The others were Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson, which were occupied by Russia and then voted to join Russia in referenda that were widely disputed internationally.

Russia currently occupies about a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, which is less than what it held at its peak.

Russian forces have been battling against Ukrainian troops in Donetsk and Luhansk — which is commonly referred to as the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine — since 2014, and yet the Russians have still been unable to capture the entire Donetsk oblast. The Russians control the entire Crimean Peninsula, almost all of the Luhansk oblast, and about three-quarters of the other three regions.

Trump has discussed the idea of “land swaps” as a part of any agreement, and said he’d try to make sure both sides have to give up land, meaning the Russians giving up territory they currently occupy.

Should the offer Witkoff mentioned include giving up the entirety of Donetsk, it would mean Ukraine giving up land that it hasn’t lost in more than a decade of fighting and more than three and a half years since the full-scale invasion.

Zelensky has said he would not agree to any deal that requires giving up Ukrainian territory, and has pointed out that the country’s constitution prohibits it anyway.

Witkoff maintained that Putin told the president during their in-person meeting that he “wanted peace.”

Another sticking point for Ukrainian leaders is ensuring that there are mechanisms in place after the war concludes to ensure Russia doesn’t decide to restart the conflict. Russia, the leaders of which have expansionist views of restoring the Soviet empire, wants to ensure Ukraine is left weaker than it is now.

TRUMP DISMISSES RUSSIAN COMMENTS THAT ZELENSKY IS ILLEGITIMATE: ‘IT’S ALL BULLS***’

The Russians, in a deal to end the war, want to put limits on the capacity of Ukraine’s military, want a guarantee that they will not be given NATO membership, and do not want other European countries or NATO to deploy troops to Ukraine to deter future Russian aggression.

Trump has ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine and deploying U.S. troops to Ukraine as a part of such a peacekeeping force, but has kept open the possibility of air support for them.