Rescuers work at the site of a Russian strike on a nine-storey residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, 31 July 2025. Photo: EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO

US officials held secret talks with “Putin’s top people” earlier this week in a bid to end the war in Ukraine but failed to make any progress on a peace deal, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed on Thursday.

Speaking to Fox News Radio, Rubio said the previously unreported negotiations took place on Monday or Tuesday, with the US holding “hopes of arriving at some understanding on a path forward that would lead to peace”.

The talks came after US President Donald Trump shortened his deadline for Vladimir Putin to end the war or face sanctions from an initial 50 days to just “10 or 12” earlier this week.

“What bothers the president the most is he has these great phone calls where everyone sort of claims yeah, we’d like to see this end […] then he turns on the news and another city has been bombed,” Rubio said, adding that Russia had not shown a “sincere interest” in ending the conflict.

Rubio offered no further details on where the talks took place or who participated in them, but said Washington could impose secondary sanctions on Russian oil exports and sectoral sanctions against Russia’s banking system if no progress was made towards a ceasefire.

Earlier on Thursday, senior US diplomat John Kelley told the UN Security Council that Trump had given both Russia and Ukraine until 8 August to “negotiate a ceasefire and durable peace”, with the US prepared to impose “additional measures to secure peace” if the deadline was not met.

Trump has increasingly expressed his frustration with Putin amid Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks, saying on Monday that “every time I think [the war] is going to end, he kills people”.

After a fresh missile and drone attack on Kyiv that killed 28 people and injured 159 more on Thursday, the US president called Russia’s actions “disgusting” and reiterated his threat of sanctions against Moscow should Putin not agree to end the war in the coming days.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has repeatedly expressed Ukraine’s readiness for a full, unconditional ceasefire, described the strikes on Kyiv as “Russia’s responses to everyone around the world who called for an end to the war” and called for “powerful and synchronised pressure” on Moscow.

The Kremlin, however, appears to have brushed off Trump’s ultimatum, with Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling reporters on Wednesday that Russia had developed a “certain immunity” to Western sanctions after living under a “huge number of restrictions” since the start of the war.