Washington to push Kyiv to concessions while Moscow offers nothing - Herbst

"It is hard to say [what the negotiations will look like by the end of this year]," Herbst said.

"The easiest thing to say is that the current trend will continue, which means that the [Donald Trump] administration will try to force Ukraine to make bigger compromises. Compromises that the administration believes will force Russia to agree to peace."

This is a false assumption, because if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agrees to the proposal to give up the Donbas, Russia will have additional conditions, the diplomat added.

"We have not yet seen Russia offer a single real compromise. Secretly, they might have probably said they will accept American security guarantees," Herbst explained.

Publicly, the Russians declare that they will not accept any European troops on Ukrainian territory, although their presence in the Donbas free economic zone is part of the peace idea.

"So, I repeat, Russia has offered nothing, and the [Trump] administration has been negotiating in recent months as if Russia had offered something. This is a problem," the former ambassador assured.