MUNICH — For the past three years, the annual Munich Security Conference has been the backdrop to high-stakes negotiations on the war between Russia and Ukraine. This year, it’s likely to serve as a glaring reminder of just how stuck talks are.

Dozens of world leaders and senior officials including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will descend on the grand and historic Bayerischer Hof hotel beginning Friday. But six European officials said they did not expect many concrete results to come out of the gathering other than statements of solidarity.

The U.S. has made clear to Ukraine that it will not finalize a deal on security guarantees to protect Ukraine from future Russian aggression until Kyiv and Moscow reach an overall agreement to end the war, according to two of the European officials and a senior U.S. official. And with Russia holding firm on demands for territory that Ukraine won’t budge on, the peace process is jammed.

President Donald Trump isn’t trying to use the agreement as leverage with Zelenskyy, a senior administration official said.

“He wants to get a lot of things firmed up and solidified before actually signing,” the official said, referencing the security guarantees. “He doesn’t just want to sign it, and if that sort of impedes any further peace talks, what’s the point?”

Territory is “the main sticking point,” the official added, referring to Russia’s insistence that it control all of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, even parts it has not captured. “Both sides are pretty dug in, but I think everyone feels that there’s a path forward.” The official, like others interviewed, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

The U.S., Russia and Ukraine are planning to meet again next week, possibly in Miami or Abu Dhabi, according to another person familiar with the diplomatic discussions — and that’s where U.S. officials feel any progress is likely to be made. Still, Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, is juggling talks on Iran and the Ukraine war, making shuttle diplomacy even more difficult.

“We still have not seen a single indication that Russia is serious, either about peace talks or the outcomes,” Latvia’s Foreign Minister Baiba Braže said in an interview. “So for now, at least, my conclusion is that Russia is still trying to get through these so-called peace talks, the results they can’t get on the battlefield.”

Zelenskyy will use this weekend’s gathering to call for more pressure on Russia and to show a united front with Europe. India has promised the U.S. it will no longer buy Russian oil and European officials hope that the U.S. will to do more to crack down on Russia’s shadow fleet.

The Ukrainian president, responding to questions from POLITICO in a small WhatsApp chat with reporters, said he will stress his country’s need for air defense at the summit and highlight its efforts to export weapons in order to finance drone production for the battlefield. He also said he intended to meet with Macron and other European officials and push — as he has before — the need for more weapons.

“We are ready to open a lot of joint productions. There are also several aid packages that I personally hope to discuss, my contact with partners needed there,” he said.

Ukraine is looking for more funding for the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, which is overseen by NATO and is backed with contributions from three-quarters of the alliance’s 32 members.

Zelenskyy appears to be counting on the Trump administration’s desire to get a deal done quickly. He said last week that Washington is pressing Kyiv and Moscow to end the war by the beginning of the summer because of midterm elections in November.

Since Trump took office last year, his team has tried to encourage Ukraine and Russia to end the fighting, often by pushing Kyiv to make concessions. The diplomacy repeatedly follows a familiar cycle: Trump creates a deadline and calls for a swift end to the fighting; Ukraine rushes to participate while Russia balks; Russia comes in at the last minute to offer to negotiate, and then discussions stall as both sides are unable to narrow gaps.

The Trump administration has said it takes Russian President Vladimir Putin at his word when he tells them he wants to end the fighting — even though most European intelligence services conclude otherwise. Putin has long maintained that Russia is acting in self defense.

Giedrimas Jeglinskas, a member of the Lithuanian parliament and a former NATO official, said the Russia-Ukraine talks “seem to be stalled,” with Russia not willing to accept any Western security force in Ukraine and Kyiv unable to accept the Kremlin’s demands for territory. “It’s quite a bind when one thinks of how to move forward,” he said.

U.S. and European officials argue that the diplomacy under Trump has produced concrete results. The U.S. and Europe have agreed on significant security commitments to Ukraine should the fighting end. And Russian, Ukrainian and American officials have held their first trilateral meeting since the war began, with another expected soon.

Even last year at Munich — when Vice President JD Vance excoriated the transatlantic establishment by saying Europe’s “threat from within” was more dangerous than that posed by Russia and China — Zelenskyy huddled with Vance and Rubio before officials met the Russians for bilateral talks in Riyadh for the first time.

Still, the most recent round of talks in Abu Dhabi last week did not break the latest impasse. The sides reached broad agreement on how to define a ceasefire and what a demilitarized zone could look like should leaders decide to end the fighting, according to one of the European officials and and the other person familiar with the diplomatic discussions. But the main sticking points — what the map of Ukraine will look like and the presence of Western troops — remain unresolved.

While Russia aims to take control of the whole eastern Donbas region, Ukraine wants to end the fighting on the current lines and not give up territory it continues to hold.

“Russia cannot be talked into peace,” said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who chairs its Committee on Ukraine’s integration into the European Union. “Russia can only be pressured and forced into peace, and that is something that right now probably should be used as the approach towards the Russian Federation.”

But Russia’s economy is further struggling as the war drags on and the U.S. clamps down on Indian oil purchases and other Russian revenue streams.

Jeglinskas, the Lithuanian lawmaker, argued that gives Kyiv a path forward. “Ukraine needs to persevere until Russia cracks,” he said. “Easier said than done, especially now during extreme cold when we see air attacks on Ukraine energy infrastructure.”

Eli Stokols and Veronika Melkozerova contributed to this report.