The negotiations in a grand imperial palace in St Petersburg, the ninth time that Witkoff has met Putin in person, began with a goodwill gesture from Russia – the release of Stephen Hubbard, a retired US school teacher held in Russia whom US President Trump had asked the Kremlin chief to release, Reuters reported.
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Wednesday’s encounter unfolded amid concerns in Kyiv and among its allies that the United States is backing away from Ukraine, at times holding back real-time intelligence on Russian attacks and hobbling Ukraine’s military communications.
The latest talks also came more than two years since Trump promised in his successful election campaign to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours.
The Kremlin said the new 3-way peace talks, which would be at a technical level, could take place in Abu Dhabi and would be focused on how to guarantee the security of Ukraine and Russia once the war ended. They could begin sometime on or after November 10, it said. The last US-mediated peace talks took place in February before the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran.
The Kremlin was less upbeat, however, about the outcome of talks Witkoff had held a day earlier in Oslo with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the leaders of Finland and Norway, and European and NATO representatives. Witkoff told Putin the talks had been characterised by “some degree of momentum” and a US official said Ukraine had brought new ideas and proposals.
“These nuances, so to speak, do not entirely satisfy us,” Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters after the St Petersburg meeting – which lasted nearly three hours.
