Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed Wednesday to resume three-way negotiations next month with Washington and Kyiv aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, a Kremlin official said.
The Russian leader has agreed “in principle” to resume the talks after Nov. 10, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters following a meeting in St. Petersburg between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump’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 Trump pushed Kyiv to make a deal that stops the fighting.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has insisted that only a summit of leaders can break the impasse. The two armies remain locked on the battlefield, and the two countries pummel each other with daily long-range strikes.
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 basic demands.
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 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, 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.
Zelenskyy said freezing the conflict in Ukraine was the “minimum” required from Russia to bring about an end to the war.
“Right now, we have to freeze, and I think this is (the) real way to end this war,” Zelenskyy said in an interview broadcast Wednesday on Fox News.
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 via a video link, Ushakov said.
Before the meeting, Witkoff said that “there is some degree of momentum” in talks.
He thanked Putin for agreeing to send diesel to the U.S., after Trump lifted a ban despite anger from some U.S. lawmakers, adding that the fuel would help reduce prices for American farmers and truckers.
Putin said he was ready to consider prospects for the restoration of U.S.-Russia economic ties, adding that he was also prepared to discuss the U.S.-led conflict with Iran. Moscow stands ready to use its relationship with Tehran to help bring peace, he said.
Ushakov said that “large-scale joint economic projects that offer significant prospects for cooperation” between Russia and the U.S. were discussed in detail with Witkoff.
“Some of these are, in fact, nearing the implementation stage,” he said.
In other developments, Russia on Wednesday released a retired American teacher who had been imprisoned on charges of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine. Witkoff said it appeared to be a goodwill gesture by the Kremlin after Trump asked Putin to free Stephen Hubbard.
Putin also met Wednesday with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, who was in St. Petersburg for talks with other Russian officials, the Kremlin said.
Russia has cultivated its ties with China, and the two countries last month vetoed a U.S. proposal for U.N. experts to keep monitoring sanctions on Iran.
Putin and Witkoff also discussed a possible meeting next month between the Russian, Chinese and U.S. leaders at an economic summit in China, Ushakov said, adding that Beijing is already preparing for it.
Witkoff planned to return to Oslo for more consultations after his trip to Russia, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said.
“I think we may have entered a phase now where the Russians are also looking for opportunities for diplomacy,” Støre told Norwegian broadcaster NRK on Wednesday.
Zelenskyy was still in Oslo early Wednesday, where he visited Norway's parliament and met with lawmakers.
Zelenskyy said the talks in Oslo and St. Petersburg included discussion of future security guarantees for Ukraine, the fate of occupied territories, postwar reconstruction and the possibility of a ceasefire.
At the White House on Tuesday, Trump increased the pressure on Zelenskyy to come to an agreement with Russia as relations between the two leaders have soured again.
“We want Zelenskyy to make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We’ve given a lot to Ukraine. We’ve gotten absolutely nothing back except grief, death, tremendous monetary loss.”
If that doesn’t happen, “I think it’s going to be a very bad thing,” Trump said.
Amid fears that Washington was turning its back on Ukraine, Zelenskyy said Kyiv is once again receiving early warnings from its partners about incoming Russian missiles, after recent strikes that he said occurred without enough notice from allies.
Overnight Russian attacks in Kyiv left three people dead and 12 wounded, while 10 residential buildings were damaged, the city’s military administration said.
Energy facilities were targeted in Kyiv and three other cities in Russian attacks early Wednesday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said. Outside the eastern city of Kharkiv, two people died and 11 others were wounded when drones exploded in a residential area, he said.
The Russian Defense Ministry said that overnight its forces struck a warehouse, an electrical substation and a bulk carrier at sea that was headed to the Ukrainian port of Odesa.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported Wednesday that its air defenses intercepted 373 Ukrainian drones over multiple Russian regions overnight, as well as the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
