Moscow has set "no deadline" for ending the war in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday, ahead of a key diplomatic meeting in Geneva between Ukrainian and American envoys.

“Did you hear us say anything about deadlines? We have no deadlines, we only have a duty. We are in the process of fulfilling them,” Lavrov said, according to the Russian state news agency TASS. Meanwhile, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators traveled to Geneva for separate meetings with U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, in an effort to prepare new trilateral talks with Russia.

Former US President Donald Trump is pushing for a resolution to the conflict that began with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but diplomatic efforts have so far failed to produce concrete results, despite several rounds of negotiations in recent months. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that it would be a mistake to set deadlines or forecasts at this stage. "It would be the biggest mistake to try to set any stages or make any forecasts now. I don't want to make these mistakes," he said.

On the other hand, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly stated that a direct meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, would be necessary to reach a final agreement, especially on the issue of territories in eastern Ukraine that Moscow seeks to control. However, Peskov reiterated that such a summit cannot take place without first completing the negotiating work at lower levels, so that the leaders' meeting can serve to "put the final point" on the agreement.