US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met on the sidelines of an ASEAN foreign ministers' gathering in Manila on July 23, in the highest-level US-Russia contact in months on ending the war in Ukraine — but both sides signalled no breakthrough and little optimism for a quick resumption of substantive talks.

The 35-minute meeting

The meeting lasted just 35 minutes, Reuters reported. Rubio called the talks “good” and “frank” but said fresh proposals would be needed after previous peace ideas failed, declining to give details. “You think we settled the war in Ukraine in our 30 minutes here in Asia? That's not the way it works,” he told reporters, according to RFE/RL. “Ending [the war] will require new ideas,” Rubio said separately, adding that the proposals discussed previously were “not acceptable to Ukraine at the time” and “probably less acceptable to them” now.

Lavrov, for his part, “reaffirmed Russia's readiness for a political and diplomatic settlement of the conflict” and told Rubio that Moscow remained committed to the proposals put forward at the August 2025 Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage, Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement carried by Al Jazeera and other outlets. Lavrov also urged Washington to halt arms supplies to Ukraine and criticised what he called European allies' “destabilising policy” aimed at inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia, according to Ukrainian outlet pravda.com.ua.

A hardening backdrop

The meeting marks a notable downgrade in the US’ role in the peace talks after a great deal of progross was made at the end of 2025, brokered by the US special envoys and culminating in a Moscow meeting on December 3 with Putin that produced a 27-point peace plan (27PPP) that came close to being adopted. But since the start of Operation Epic Fury on February 28, the White House has become distracted and the momentum lost.

The meeting came a day after Bloomberg reported that Russia is no longer willing to return some occupied Ukrainian territories as part of any peace deal, hardening its position because it believes the informal “spirit of Anchorage” understandings with Trump have collapsed.

President Vladimir Putin remains committed to taking full control of Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region by force and will now retain areas of Sumy and Kharkiv near the Russian border as buffer zones, three people told Bloomberg, speaking anonymously. Putin has abandoned earlier concessions because Russia views confrontational statements from Washington as evidence that informal understandings reached at his August 2025 summit with President Donald Trump in Anchorage have collapsed, the sources said.

Rubio has repeatedly denied any deal was struck at Anchorage; asked about the summit, he told reporters “we'll have to find new suggestions and new ideas”, since the earlier proposal “was not acceptable to Ukraine at the time”.

The diplomatic stalemate comes at a time of an escalating tit-for-tat missile war between Ukraine and Russia, where neither side is any more in the mood to comprimse. Ukrainian drones killed seven people at e-commerce giant Wildberries’ warehouses in Russia's Tambov region on the night of July 18, bne IntelliNews reported at the time — one of the deadliest strikes on a civilian commercial site inside Russia since the war began — with Kyiv accusing the retailer of storing sanctioned drone and navigation components. Russia responded with one of its largest missile barrages of the war on Kyiv the next day.

Rubio said Trump's priority was “that people stop dying” and that the president “thinks it's a stupid war”, according to Meduza.

“I think both sides should have an incentive to bring it to an end,” Rubio said. “That's been the challenge — an end that both sides can accept.” Separately on July 23, Zelenskiy warned Russia could step up attacks on Black Sea shipping to undermine Ukraine's grain corridor, and said he had discussed “several ideas” in a call with US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, which he intends to pursue “in the near future”.