Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff have held talks in Moscow, the Kremlin has said, two days before a Friday deadline the US president set for Russia to reach a peace deal in the Ukraine war or face new sanctions.
Russian news agencies said the talks ended after about three hours, and Witkoff’s convoy was seen leaving the Kremlin. There was no immediate statement from either side on how the talks had gone.
The visit is Witkoff’s fifth trip to Moscow in his capacity as Trump’s lead negotiator with the Kremlin, and comes as Trump has begun to talk tough on Russia for the first time since taking over the presidency.
Trump cut short an earlier 50-day deadline to Putin, claiming he saw no desire in the Kremlin to change its behaviour and calling recent strikes that killed civilians in Kyiv “disgusting”. He has now promised to introduce secondary tariffs on nations that import Russian oil if no progress is made by Friday.
“We have a meeting with Russia tomorrow,” Trump said on Tuesday, when asked if the threat still stood. “We’re going to see what happens. We’ll make that determination at that time.”
After Trump made the threat of further sanctions, the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev claimed the harsh rhetoric could lead to a direct conflict between Russia and the US. In response, Trump ordered two nuclear submarines to be repositioned.
Witkoff arrived in Moscow on Wednesday and was pictured taking an early morning stroll through a park in central Moscow with Kirill Dmitriev, a Kremlin envoy who has played a key role in negotiations so far.
“It is very important to strengthen all the levers in the arsenal of the United States, Europe, and the G7 so that a ceasefire truly comes into effect immediately. Ukraine sees the political will, appreciates the efforts of our partners, of America, and of everyone who is helping,” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, wrote on social media on Wednesday, shortly after Witkoff landed in Moscow.
Putin has given little hint that he is ready to make concessions or willing to adjust Russia’s core war aims. However, reports by Bloomberg and the independent Russian news outlet the Bell have suggested that the Kremlin could propose a halt to long-range strikes by both sides as an offering to Trump. Both Trump and Kyiv have been calling for a full and unconditional ceasefire, to allow negotiations to begin, but a halt to long-range strikes could offer welcome breathing space to both sides.
Ukraine has hit Russian energy and military infrastructure with long-range drones, and caused aviation chaos in Russia as airports are forced to close during the drone attacks.
Meanwhile, Russian missile and drone strikes against different Ukrainian cities continue on an almost nightly basis. Overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, a recreational centre in the southern Zaporizhzhia region was hit, killing two people and injuring 12, according to the regional governor, Ivan Fedorov.
On some nights Russia now sends up to 500 long-range kamikaze drones into Ukraine, and attacks have killed 72 people in Kyiv alone since May.
Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, is also expected to visit Kyiv in coming days although no firm date has yet been set for the trip.
On Monday, Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin was looking forward to Witkoff’s visit and valued talks with him. “We consider them important, substantive and very useful,” he said.
Witkoff, a real estate lawyer, has no previous diplomatic experience, and his solo travels to Russia have alarmed some other Ukraine allies who fear he may be being played by Putin. In interviews, he has spoken warmly of the rapport he has with Putin, and said Trump was “touched” by an oil painting of the US president gifted to him via Witkoff.
“This is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to re-establish through, by the way, a simple word called communication,” Witkoff said in an interview with Tucker Carlson.
Zelenskyy has said he wants to meet with Putin in a leaders’ summit moderated by either Trump or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to discuss a negotiated settlement, but the Kremlin has so far dismissed the idea. Instead, it has sent a low-level delegation headed by the former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky to a series of direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul. The last round of talks, in July, broke down after less than an hour.
