In trying to end the Russia-Ukraine war, the U.S. must not make the disastrous mistake of misreading Putin’s real motives.

The officials in a joint statement said they made progress on creating a security framework for postwar Ukraine and are urging Russia to commit to peace.

Never in U.S. history has an American president been so out of step with the American people for so long on an important foreign policy issue.

Putin has long argued that this has posed a threat to Russia. And it was talk of Ukraine joining NATO that was at least partly used as his rationale for invasion. On the equal and opposite side, both NATO and Europe more broadly, now see Ukraine as its frontline against Russian aggression.

Russian President Vladimir Putin met US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner in the Kremlin on Tuesday for talks on a possible way to end the deadliest European conflict since World War Two.

Now almost four years into a war Russia started and with little to show for President Trump's peace efforts, Oklahoma's senior U.S. senator says, "Putin doesn’t really want peace, he wants to dominate his neighbors.

“President Trump greatly appreciates his supporters and donors; however, unlike politicians of the past, he is not bought by anyone and does what’s in the best interest of the country,” Danielle Alvarez, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition, said in a statement. “Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

The White House national security strategy lays out its conflict with Europe amid the Ukraine war—follow Newsweek's live coverage.