- Witcoff interacted with Putin in Russia.
- The meeting comes as American tension with China, Iran Spike.
- The conversation on the complete ceasefire in Ukraine has stopped.
MOSCOW: US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witchoff on Friday interacted with President Vladimir Putin in St. Petersburg to search for a peace deal on Ukraine, as Trump asked Russia to “move forward”.
Putin was shown on the State TV Greeting Vitcooff at the President’s Library of St. Petersburg at the beginning of the talks. Izwastia The news outlet first released a video of Vitkoff, leaving a hotel in the city, with Kiril Dimitriv, Putin’s investment messenger.
In the Vicchoff Arctic and in the Russian rare Earth minerals in the Russian side of the possible joint investment, it has emerged as an important person in on-off coordination between Moscow and Washington.
However, the talks come at a time when the US-Russian dialogue aims to agree on a ceasefire before the possible peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, which seems to be more stalled by disagreement around the conditions for full break in enmity.
Trump, who has shown signs of losing patience, has talked about imposing secondary restrictions on countries that buy Russian oil if they feel that Moscow is pulling his feet on a Ukrainian deal.
On Friday, he said in a post on Truth Social: “Russia has to move forward. Many people (are) are dying, thousands in a week, in a terrible and insensitive war – a war that would have never happened, and would not have happened, if I had been the President !!!”
Putin has said that he is in principle to agree on a complete ceasefire, but said that many important circumstances have not yet agreed to how it will work and said what he says to the root causes of war, not yet addressed.
In particular, he has stated that Ukraine should not join NATO, that its army needs to limit the size, and Russia should achieve the entirety of the area of four Ukrainian regions, which despite not being fully controlled by any of them claims.
Moscow Ukraine and Russian forces to proceed to the battlefield with only less than 20% of the Ukraine and Russian forces, the Kremlin believes that Russia is in a strong position when it comes to conversation and Ukraine must give concessions.
Kiev says that the terms of Russia will be a capitulation amount.
Trump-Putin meeting?
Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov said that Putin and Vitkoff could discuss the possibility of Russian leader to face Trump face to face.
Putin and Trump have spoken by phone, but are yet to meet personally as the US leaders returned to the White House for the second four -year term.
However, Peskov performed the Vitcofte-Putin Dialogue, before telling the Russian state media that they begin that the US messenger’s visit would not be “transient” and no success was expected.
He said that the meeting would be a chance for Russia to express its “worries”. Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of prohibiting each other from attacking the energy infrastructure.
The meeting, the third between Putin and Vitcoff this year, comes when American tension with Iran and China, with both Moscow’s close colleagues, are growing out of the trade war with Tehran’s nuclear program and Beijing.
Witchoff, who visited an synagogue in St. Petersburg on Friday, is scheduled to be in Oman for a conversation with Iran at his nuclear program on Saturday. Trump threatened Tehran with military action if it does not agree to a deal. Moscow has repeatedly offered his help in trying to achieve a diplomatic disposal.
The US and Russian officials said that they made progress during a conversation in Istanbul on Thursday, which is to normalize the work of their diplomatic missions as they begin to reconstruct the relationship.
At a February 1 meeting between Witchoff and Putin, an American teacher with a flying home with American messenger Mark Phogel, which was said by Washington, was misrepresented by Russia.
Kesenia Karelina, a Russian-American spa worker,, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison in Russia, was exchanged for Arthur Petrov on Thursday, which the US accused of creating a global smuggling ring to move sensitive electronics in the Russia’s army.
