MOSCOW, April 11 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with President Vladimir Putin on Friday in St Petersburg about the search for a peace deal on
Ukraine as Trump told Russia to “get moving”.
Putin was shown on state TV greeting Witkoff in St Petersburg’s presidential library at the start of the negotiations. The Izvestia news outlet earlier released video of Witkoff leaving a hotel in the city, accompanied by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s investment envoy.
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Witkoff has emerged as a key figure in the on-off rapprochement between Moscow and Washington amid talk on the Russian side of potential joint investments in the Arctic and in Russian rare earth minerals.
However, the talks come at a time when U.S.-Russia dialogue aimed at agreeing a ceasefire ahead of a possible peace deal to end the war in Ukraine appears to have stalled over disagreements around conditions for a full pause in hostilities.
Trump, who has shown signs of losing patience, has spoken of imposing secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil if he feels Moscow is dragging its feet on a Ukrainian deal.
On Friday, he said in a post on Truth Social: “Russia has to get moving. Too many people (are) DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war – A war that should have never happened, and wouldn’t have happened, if I were President!!!”
Putin has said he is ready in principle to agree a full ceasefire, but has said that many crucial conditions have yet to be agreed about how it would work and has said that what he calls the root causes of the war have yet to be addressed.
Specifically, he has said that Ukraine should not join NATO, that the size of its army needs to be limited, and that Russia should get the entirety of the territory of the four Ukrainian regions it claims as its own despite not fully controlling any of them.
With Moscow controlling just under 20% of Ukraine and Russian forces continuing to advance on the battlefield, the Kremlin believes Russia is in a strong position when it comes to negotiations and that Ukraine should make concessions.
Kyiv says Russia’s terms would amount to a capitulation.
TRUMP-PUTIN MEETING?
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin and Witkoff might discuss the possibility of the Russian leader meeting Trump face-to-face.
Putin and Trump have spoken by phone but have yet to meet in person since the U.S. leader returned to the White House in January for a second four-year term.
However, Peskov played down the Witkoff-Putin talks, telling Russian state media before they started that the U.S. envoy’s visit would not be “momentous” and no breakthroughs were expected.
He said the meeting would be a chance for Russia to express its “concerns”. Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of violating
a moratorium on striking each other’s energy infrastructure.
The meeting, the third this year between Putin and Witkoff, comes at a time when U.S. tensions with Iran and China, both close allies of Moscow, have been heightened by Tehran’s nuclear programme and a burgeoning trade war with Beijing.
Russia needs her security needs recognized? Who attacked whom? Did anyone attack Russia? Of course not. So, why worry about security. Its like your neighbor taking over part of your house and telling you that he had to, because he would have felt threatened otherwise.
How many times should I answer this question? I have posted mine and others’ responses and in great detail – yet you refuse to open your mind to the facts. Superpowers – and Russia is one – have special security requirements. The same requirements America would have if, let’s say China, armed Mexico to use it as a proxy against us. Why is this so hard for you to understand? And then you complain that I spam most of your comments.
End game!
The Russian Federation has already stated clearly its terms and justified its actions both morally and strategically. The nato neo nazi globalist puppet sending thousands of ukes to their useless deaths must end its quest.