- Witkoff has conversations with Putin in Russia.
- The meeting occurs as US tensions with China, Iran Spike.
- The conversations about the full fire in Ukraine seem stagnant.
Moscow: The special envoy of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff, conversations with President Vladimir Putin on Friday in St. Petersburg about the search for a peace agreement in Ukraine as Trump told Russia to “move.”
Putin was shown on state television that greet Witkoff in the San Petersburg Presidential Library at the beginning of the negotiations. He Izvestia News Outlet previously launched a Witkoff video that leaves a hotel in the city, accompanied by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s investment envoy.
Witkoff has become a key figure in the approach of lighting-incentive between Moscow and Washington in the middle of the talk on the Russian side of possible joint investments in Arctic minerals and in the Russian rare earths.
However, the conversations arrive at a time when Russia dialogue of the United States with the aim of agreeing a high fire before a possible peace agreement to end the war in Ukraine seems to have stagnated in disagreements around the conditions for a complete pause in hostilities.
Trump, who has shown signs of losing patience, has talked about imposing secondary sanctions to countries that buy Russian oil if he feels that Moscow is dragging his feet in a Ukrainian agreement.
On Friday, he said in a publication about Truth Social: “Russia has to move. Too many people are dying, thousands per week, in a terrible and meaningless war, a war that should never have happened, and it would not have happened, if I were president!”
Putin has said that he is ready in principle to agree on a complete fire, but has said that many crucial conditions have not yet agreed on how it would work and has said that what he calls the causes of war has not yet been addressed.
Specifically, he said that Ukraine should not join NATO, that the size of his army must be limited, and that Russia should obtain the entire territory of the four Ukrainian regions that affirms as their own despite not completely controlling any of them.
With Moscow, controlling a little less than 20% of Ukraine and the Russian forces that continue to advance on the battlefield, the Kremlin believes that Russia is in a strong position when it comes to negotiations and that Ukraine should make concessions.
Kyiv says that Russia’s terms would be equivalent to a capitulation.
Trump-Poutin meeting?
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Witkoff could discuss the possibility that the Russian leader meets Trump face to face.
Putin and Trump have spoken on the phone, but they have not yet gathered in person since the US leader returned to the White House in January for a second four -year period.
However, Peskov played Witkoff-Poutin conversations, telling Russian state media before the visit of the US envoy would not be “transcendental” and progress was not expected.
He said the meeting would be an opportunity for Russia to express his “concerns.” Moscow and kyiv have repeatedly accused a moratorium to hit the energy infrastructure of the other.
The meeting, the third of this year between Putin and Witkoff, arrives at a time when US tensions with Iran and China, both close allies in Moscow, have increased by Tehran’s nuclear program and a flourishing commercial war with Beijing.
Witkoff, who visited a synagogue in San Petersburg earlier on Friday, will perform in Oman on Saturday by conversations with Iran about his nuclear program. Trump has threatened Tehran with military action if he does not agree with an agreement. Moscow has repeatedly offered his help to try to ensure a diplomatic agreement.
Officials from the United States and Russia said they had progressed during the conversations in Istanbul on Thursday to normalize the work of their diplomatic missions as the ties begin to rebuild.
An February meeting between Witkoff and Putin culminated with the American envoy flying home with Marc Fogel, an American teacher that Washington had said that Russia stopped unfairly.
Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American Spa worker, who had been sentenced to 12 years in prison in Russia, was exchanged on Thursday by Arthur Petrov, whom the United States had accused of forming a world smuggling ring to transfer sensitive electronics to Russia’s army.
