US President Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg yesterday to seek a peace agreement to end the war in Ukraine, while Trump told Russia to "move forward", Reuters reports.
Putin was shown on state television welcoming Vitkoff to the presidential library in St. Petersburg at the start of the negotiations, and state news agencies later reported that the talks lasted more than four hours.
"The topic of the meeting — aspects of the Ukrainian solution," the Kremlin announced after the meeting ended.
Vitkoff has emerged as a key figure in occasional attempts to bring Moscow and Washington closer together, with announcements from the Russian side about possible joint investments in the Arctic and in rare earth minerals in Russia.
Russian media outlet Izvestia earlier published footage of Vitkoff leaving a hotel in the city, accompanied by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's investment envoy.
According to Russian state news agency TASS, Dmitriev said Friday's talks were productive, Reuters reports.
However, the talks come as dialogue between the US and Russia, aimed at achieving a ceasefire as a step towards a possible peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, has stalled due to disagreements over the conditions for a complete cessation of hostilities.
Trump, who has shown signs of impatience, has announced the possibility of imposing secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil if he concludes that Moscow is stalling on a deal on Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials have in recent days sent Washington a list of targets they believe Russia has attacked, violating a ceasefire agreement over energy infrastructure that the two countries reached last month, according to two people familiar with the list.
"Russia must move forward. Too many people are dying, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war – a war that should never have happened, and would not have happened if I were president," Trump wrote yesterday on the "Truth Social" network.
Putin stated that he was ready in principle to agree to a complete ceasefire, but stressed that key details of implementation remained unresolved, and that the root causes of the war, as he saw them, had not yet been addressed.
He specifically emphasized that Ukraine should not join NATO, that the size of its army must be limited, and that Russia should receive the entire territory of four Ukrainian regions that it considers its own, although it does not fully control them.
Given that Moscow controls slightly less than 20 percent of Ukraine and that Russian forces continue to advance on the ground, the Kremlin believes that it is in a favorable position for negotiations and that Ukraine needs to make concessions.
Kiev says Russian conditions would amount to capitulation.
Trump-Putin meeting?
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Vitkoff could discuss the possibility of the Russian leader meeting face-to-face with Trump, Reuters reports.
Putin and Trump have spoken by phone but have not yet met in person since the US leader returned to the White House for a second four-year term in January.
However, Peskov downplayed the significance of the talks between Vitkoff and Putin, telling Russian state media before the meeting began that the US envoy's visit would not be "epochal" and that no breakthroughs were expected.
He said the meeting would be an opportunity for Russia to voice its concerns. Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of violating a moratorium on attacks on energy infrastructure.
The meeting, the third this year between Putin and Vitkoff, comes as tensions between the US and Iran and China — which are close allies of Moscow — have escalated over Iran's nuclear program and an escalating trade war with Beijing.
Vitkoff, who visited a synagogue in St. Petersburg earlier on Friday, is scheduled to travel to Oman on Saturday for talks with Iran over its nuclear program. Trump has threatened Tehran with military action if it does not agree to a deal. Moscow has repeatedly offered to help in efforts to reach a diplomatic solution.
U.S. and Russian officials said they made progress during talks in Istanbul on Thursday on the normalization of diplomatic missions as they try to restore relations.
A February meeting between Witkoff and Putin resulted in the US envoy returning home with Mark Fogel, an American teacher who Washington claimed was unjustly detained in Russia.
A Russian-American spa worker, Ksenia Karelina, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in Russia, was exchanged on Thursday for Artur Petrov, who the US has accused of forming a global network to smuggle sensitive electronics to the Russian military.
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