Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to restart U.S.-mediated peace talks with Ukraine as soon as next month, the Kremlin said Wednesday after Putin met U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg. The talks could begin on or after Nov. 10, Reuters reported.
The Kremlin says the three-way negotiations would take place at a technical level, possibly in Abu Dhabi, and would focus on how to guarantee the security of both Ukraine and Russia once the war ends. The last U.S.-mediated talks took place in February, before the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran.
Three hours in a palace
Witkoff and Putin met for nearly three hours at the Constantine Palace. It was the ninth time Witkoff has sat down with Putin in person. Russia opened the session with a goodwill gesture: it freed Stephen Hubbard, a retired American teacher whom President Donald Trump had asked Putin to release. We covered that story in our report on Hubbard’s release.
Witkoff brought documents with a range of ideas for a peace deal. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, joined by phone to pass along ideas of his own. Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s investment envoy, also took part, and the Kremlin said the two sides discussed major joint economic projects, some of them close to launch.
The gap between Moscow and Kyiv
Russia and Ukraine still sit far apart on the terms of a deal. Putin has shown little sign of moving on his core demands: full Russian control of the Donetsk region, no NATO membership for Ukraine, and a full peace agreement rather than a temporary ceasefire. Trump has stepped up pressure on Kyiv. On Tuesday he said it was time for Ukraine to end the war or face “a very bad thing.”
The Kremlin sounded cooler about a meeting Witkoff held a day earlier in Oslo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the leaders of Finland and Norway, and European and NATO officials. Witkoff told Putin that meeting had built some momentum, and a U.S. official said Ukraine brought new ideas. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said some of those nuances do not fully satisfy Moscow.
Iran, fertilizer and a possible summit
Putin also used the meeting to pitch himself as a helper on Iran. He told Witkoff that Russia has a decades-long relationship with Tehran and could use it to address U.S. concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, and he said a deal with Iran was both possible and necessary. He added that Russia could ship large amounts of fertilizer to the United States to help American farmers.
The two men also discussed a possible meeting in China next month among Putin, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Kremlin said Beijing is already preparing what it called the first meeting of its kind.
Strain between Washington and Kyiv
Relations between Washington and Kyiv have worsened since Trump announced a diesel export deal with Russia earlier this month, a move aimed at lowering U.S. fuel prices. We reported on the related sanctions decision in our story on the Russia sanctions waiver. Ukraine says some of its intelligence sharing and its use of the Starshield satellite system have been disrupted. Zelenskiy said the Oslo meeting produced an agreement to fix those problems.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter, that Elon Musk ordered a slowdown last week of the military version of Starlink that Ukraine uses to track Russian ballistic missile strikes. Reuters could not immediately verify that report. Musk has said the U.S. military or the president makes such decisions. Trump says he was not responsible, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated Wednesday that Washington has not cut off Kyiv’s access to Starlink.
Zelenskiy said he hopes to settle the main issues in a three-way meeting with Putin and Trump. The Kremlin says any Putin-Zelenskiy meeting would need careful preparation by aides first.
