After marathon talks this week, the result was a flurry of mixed messages.
The summit between Russian and US officials on Monday was "not an easy dialogue", one of Moscow's representatives, Grigorii Karasin, told the state-run news outlet TASS.
US President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, described it as a "great meeting".
Delegations from both countries, as well as Ukraine, convened in Saudi Arabia, as they have done intermittently for weeks, to discuss a ceasefire.
But that's proving elusive. More than three years after Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbour, the slaughter continues with gusto.
As the talks were happening in Riyadh, Russia struck several targets in Ukraine's Sumy region, including a school and a hospital, wounding around 90 people.
Meanwhile, according to estimates from the UK's Ministry of Defence, Russia has suffered more than 900,000 casualties since February 2022.
It said up to 250,000 Russian soldiers have been killed.
The US and Russia say ceasefire negotiations are now focused on territory, and it's an issue the war's belligerents could not be further apart on.
Russia is demanding it gets ceded not only the land it currently occupies, but also hundreds of square kilometres of Ukrainian territory its troops have never set foot in.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, has said on multiple occasions ceding any land to Moscow would be a red line for his country.
Russian newspaper Kommersant last week reported details of a closed-doors March 18 meeting held as part of President Vladimir Putin's appearance at a business summit in Moscow.
It claimed Mr Putin had told those present he would demand six Ukrainian regions (Crimea, Sevastopol, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia) be recognised as Russian as part of the ceasefire talks.
Russia's military currently occupies most, but not all, of those areas.
In September 2022, Mr Putin announced to Russia's parliament the territories had been officially annexed — something not recognised by the international community.
Vlad Mykhnenko, a professor of geography and political economy at Oxford University, said the idea Ukrainian troops would withdraw from areas Russian counterparts had never been in was fanciful.
"The Russian side is putting up crazy claims and then probably trying to walk back from them. But it looks like the American administration is not pushing back at all," he said.
"I'm not sure what the strategy in Washington DC is, because obviously the Ukrainians aren't going to agree to these crazy demands."
Russia prepared to play long game
Kommersant's report, which attributes the leaked information to "participants" at the meeting, claims that if the areas Mr Putin says he's annexed are recognised as Russian by the international community soon, the Kremlin would "not lay claim to Odessa and other territories that currently belong to Ukraine".
The Kremlin defines Odessa, as well as all of southern and eastern Ukraine as Novorossiya or "New Russia".
Mr Putin even used the term during his interview with US broadcaster Tucker Carlson last year and claimed that because the areas had been conquered by Russian empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century, Moscow should control them.
The word Novorossiya first appeared in 1764, but Professor Mykhnenko says it's never been widely used.
"In some circles, this land was called New Russia, because you have to call it something," he said.
"Putin started using the term in 2014, but strangely New Russia now covers areas that were never part of the traditional definition at all, like Kharkiv for example.
"It's a phrase that's very elastic, and that's why they're using it, so they can stretch it.
"Just imagine if in some parallel universe Britain attacked Australia tomorrow and said, well New South Wales is Wales, they speak English, so we are going to reoccupy.
"In fact, that example probably has more legitimacy because New South Wales actually exists as a thing on a map, unlike New Russia."
While others may not perceive Moscow's demands to be serious, they appeared to double down on them at the weekend.
A report in The Moscow Times — an anti-Kremlin newspaper based in Amsterdam — on Sunday cited an unnamed government official saying Russia wanted territory beyond the current front lines.
"Either Trump influences them [Ukraine] to leave, or we're told: 'Enter into long negotiations and simply use military force to establish control'," they said.
The official said Mr Putin would not back down on controlling all of the Ukrainian regions he announced that he'd annexed in 2022.
Doing that right now would mean Russian troops needing to take more territory, including complicated river crossings.
"I really hope it doesn't come to that. That would mean for us thousands of casualties," the official said.
Mr Putin signed an order last week requiring people in occupied Ukraine to "regulate their legal status" by taking out Russian citizenship by September 10.
If they don't they'll be classified as foreigners, and subjected to residency and work restrictions.
'There is no other way to stop this war'
Roman Kovalenko, 38, and his twin brother Dmitrii have been fighting for Ukraine on the front lines near the city of Pokrovsk — a prize considered significant as Russia attempts to gain more ground.
"The situation is very difficult because Russians are storming us every day and we are holding the positions," Roman, who is not in the area right now, said.
"Our job is to constantly think of new manoeuvrers and strategies."
Roman, who previously worked for Ukraine's tax office before joining the military, said he did not think there would be a ceasefire any time soon.
"What we need to put an end to this is three to four times more weapons to strengthen our army," he said.
"There is no other way to stop this war. Only if we are strong and we make the Russian army withdraw from our territory will the fighting stop."
Roman was sceptical about a temporary truce, warning it could backfire on Ukraine and its allies.
"Even if there is a 30-day ceasefire the enemy is going to restore its capacity and fill up its reserves with weapons and equipment and continue to fight this war," he said.
After the Riyadh talks this week, the US again failed to broker the full ceasefire Mr Trump had, on multiple occasions, asserted he would be able to organise in "a day".
The White House on Tuesday announced it had struck separate deals with Russia and Ukraine for a ceasefire in the Black Sea, although an informal truce between the two nations had already been in place in the area.
Russia's foreign ministry also said it wouldn't sign up to the agreement until sanctions were lifted on the country's financial institutions involved in international food and fertiliser trade.
The US also said both Russia and Ukraine had agreed to "develop measures for implementing" a plan that would see attacks on energy infrastructure cease.
That proposal was announced last week, but Tuesday's statement would suggest that, while there has been some progress, no deal is yet in place.
Amid the talks, fighting continues to rage with massive casualties on front lines that have been largely frozen for months.
Yaroslav Hrytsak, a historian from Kyiv's Ukrainian Catholic University, said while Russian forces had made ground in some areas, "the progress is much slower than it used to be".
"For three years I've been afraid of the collapse of the front line, but it's never happened," he said.
He said while Ukraine had a "manpower problem", it was making up for it in other areas, such as by developing world-leading combat drone technology.
"It's a war of a new generation," Professor Hrytsak said.
"This is exactly what makes Ukraine an asset. You don't have any other army in Europe which has this kind of experience."
One area where Ukraine has lost almost all ground is in Russia's Kursk region.
After a surprise attack in August last year, Kyiv's forces at one point occupied hundreds of square kilometres of territory.
However, as of this week, they'd largely been pushed back to the border, and Professor Hrytsak described the operation as "a failure".
Kursk had been seen as a potential bargaining chip Mr Zelenskyy could use in ceasefire negotiations, returning it in exchange for land Russia currently occupies.
Although with that option almost off the table, and US support also shaky under Mr Trump's new administration, analysts argue fighting Moscow's invasion will become more difficult.
EDITOR'S NOTE 27/03/2025: This story originally said 900,000 Russian soldiers had been killed in the war, but the UK Ministry of Defence says Russian forces have sustained nearly 900,000 casualties, or people who have been killed or injured.
