Kremlin says instant results not possible after Trump demands Ukraine progress

MOSCOW - The Kremlin said on Sunday contacts with U.S. President Donald Trumps team were moving ahead very well but that it was too early to expect instant results due to the level of damage done to relations under Trumps predecessor Joe Biden.

Trump, who says he wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, has repeatedly said he wants to end the bloodbath of the three-year war in Ukraine - which his administration now casts as a proxy conflict between the United States and Russia, echoing Moscows stance.

After his special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with President Vladimir Putin, Trump said on Saturday discussions aimed at ending the war may be going OK, but there’s a point at which you just have to either put up or shut up.

Everything is going very well, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state televisions most prominent Kremlin reporter, Pavel Zarubin, when asked about the differing views of the state of relations between Moscow and Washington.

Contacts were underway at several levels, Peskov said, including via the foreign ministry, intelligence agencies and Putins investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

But, of course, it is impossible to expect any instant results, Peskov said, citing what he called the damage done to bilateral relations under Biden.

Russias 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered the worst confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis - which is considered to be the time when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to intentional nuclear war.

As Witkoff held talks with Putin on Friday in the former Russian imperial capital St. Petersburg about the search for a peace deal for Ukraine, Trump told Russia to get moving.

Putin was shown on state TV greeting Witkoff, who held his hand to his heart in greeting, at the