Russia agreed to resume three-way negotiations next month with Washington and Kyiv aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin official said, potentially setting up the first such talks since February.
Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed “in principle” to restart the talks after Nov. 10, Putin's foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, told reporters following a meeting in St. Petersburg between the Russian leader and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff.
The talks will focus on “building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the conflict ends,” Ushakov said.
Witkoff's talks with Putin about Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine took place as U.S. President Donald Trump presses Kyiv to make a deal that stops the fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he supported the push from Washington to restart talks swiftly.
"The agenda is clear: to end the war, bring peace closer, and, as I understand it, prepare everything for a meeting at the leaders’ level,” Zelenskyy said in an audio message issued late Wednesday.
Russia, he added, "has said many times already that it is ready to meet in one format or another. Then something changed. Things were canceled. We’ll see what happens this time.”
Shortly after his message, a missile alert sounded over Kyiv, and loud explosions were heard in the capital.
Representatives of the three countries held three rounds of negotiations early this year, meeting twice in Abu Dhabi in January and February, followed by further talks in Geneva in February.
However, little progress was reported beyond exchanges of prisoners of war as Moscow and Kyiv stuck to their longstanding basic demands.
Latest proposals to end the war have little of value, Kremlin says
The discussion in St. Petersburg lasted about three hours, the Kremlin said, and came a day after Witkoff met with Zelenskyy and some European leaders in Norway's capital, Oslo.
The proposals that emerged from the Oslo meeting “contained little of real value in the context of resolving the Ukrainian crisis,” Ushakov said.
However, he later told Russian state TV that while Moscow isn’t “fully satisfied” with the Oslo proposals, they are a step in the right direction.
Witkoff’s meetings suggested leaders are keen to bring new momentum to U.S.-led peace efforts
Witkoff’s meetings suggested leaders are keen to bring new momentum to U.S.-led peace efforts, more than 4½ years after the war began. Efforts by the Trump administration since early last year to end the war have made no significant progress.
Witkoff and Putin met at St. Petersburg’s Constantine Palace, with Ushakov and Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev also at the table.
Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, joined the discussion by video, Ushakov said.
During the meeting, Witkoff and Kushner proposed a three-way meeting with the U.S., Russia and Ukraine at the technical level and shared progress on their talks with Zelenskyy a day earlier, according to a U.S. official familiar with the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
Witkoff and Kushner also discussed a postwar economic plan, European security and plans for the upcoming meeting, the official said.
