US President's envoy Steve Witkoff said three days after his meeting with Vladimir Putin that the Russian president wants "lasting peace" in Ukraine.
"We may be on the verge of something very, very important for the entire world," Witkoff said last night in an interview with the American channel Fox News.
US President Donald Trump wants to end the war in Ukraine and has broken the diplomatic isolation imposed by the West on his Russian counterpart to discuss it.
His administration is holding separate talks with senior Russian and Ukrainian officials, but so far those talks have failed to lead to a comprehensive cessation of hostilities.
Diplomatic talks continue, without any decisive concessions from Moscow. Kiev and some Western countries accuse Russia, whose army is larger and better equipped on the front, of deliberately stalling the talks.
Witkoff met with Putin in St. Petersburg on Friday for the third time since Trump returned to the White House in January.
The meeting, which lasted more than four hours and was attended by two close advisers to the Russian president, Yuri Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, proved "convincing," the US envoy said, adding that "the outlines" of a peace agreement were emerging.
Witkoff said that "trade opportunities" between the US and Russia are part of the negotiations and that this could "bring real stability to the region."
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