A second day of U.S.-brokered meetings in Geneva between Russia and Ukraine broke up after barely 90 minutes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of attempting to prolong the process.

The talks were difficult and businesslike, the head of Russia’s delegation Vladimir Medinsky said on Wednesday, adding the next meeting will take place soon without specifying when.

“This is complex work that requires alignment among all parties and sufficient time. There is progress, but no details can be disclosed at this stage,” National Security and Defense Council Secretary Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s delegation, told reporters in Geneva after the talks ended. The next step is to reach enough consensus to put decisions in front of the presidents, he said. He left without taking any questions.

Zelenskyy said that he expected a detailed report following the meetings from his team, but in an earlier post on X accused Moscow of stalling. “Russia is trying to drag out negotiations that could already have reached the final stage,” he said on Wednesday. He later told reporters that all sides agreed the monitoring of any potential ceasefire would involve the U.S., which he called “a constructive signal,” but said political will was still needed to end Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Medinsky later held a closed-door meeting with Ukrainian representatives after the official round of talks, the BBC’s Russian service reported.

U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff who, along with President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, was present in Geneva, said on Wednesday that there’d been “meaningful progress” during the previous day’s talks, with both sides agreeing to continue work toward a deal.

Still, as the negotiations ended there appeared to be little headway on key issues dividing the warring parties even as the discussions were said to be broader in scope than in the Abu Dhabi meetings earlier this year.

Central among the unresolved issues is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand that Ukraine hand over territory in its eastern Donetsk region that Moscow has failed to conquer in fighting dating back to 2014.

Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that he had tasked his country’s negotiators to discuss the future of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russian forces seized early in the full-scale invasion.

Zelenskyy separately told Axios on Tuesday that the Ukrainian people would reject unilaterally withdrawing from and ceding land to Russia.

U.S. officials appear divided about the prospects for a successful outcome of the talks in the near term, with some telling European counterparts that they’re skeptical Putin wants a deal any time soon even as others believe that the Kremlin is serious about bringing the war to a negotiated end.

Medinsky, a Russian presidential aide, was part of previous negotiations with Ukraine in Istanbul between May and July last year and also weeks after the start of the February 2022 invasion. He didn’t participate in the Abu Dhabi talks.

“Russia slightly changed the negotiation team, which was a surprise for us,” Zelenskyy said in an interview on Tuesday. The Ukrainian leader said that Kyiv would see how the talks go given the change.

Following Tuesday’s discussions, Umerov met with representatives of the U.S., France, the U.K., Germany, Italy and Switzerland.

“We consider Europe’s participation in the process indispensable for the successful implementation of entirely feasible agreements,” Zelenskyy said on Wednesday. Following the talks, the Ukrainian leader said he’d update his European colleagues on their progress.

Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev was also in Geneva to take part in discussions on economic cooperation with the U.S., but wasn’t set to be part of the trilateral negotiations with Ukraine, the Interfax news service reported last week.

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—With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska, Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Alberto Nardelli and Greg Sullivan.

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