U.S. Envoys Witkoff and Kushner to Meet Putin for Ukraine Peace Talks
U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday for talks on a possible way to end the war in Ukraine.
This comes after a leaked set of 28 U.S. draft peace proposals surfaced last week, drawing criticism from Ukrainian and European officials who said the plans appeared to concede to several of Moscow’s key demands.
European powers then gave their counter-proposal for peace, and at talks in Geneva, the U.S. and Ukraine said they had created an “updated and refined peace framework” to end the war.
On Sunday, Witkoff, Kushner, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council, for talks at Witkoff’s Shell Bay club near Miami.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Witkoff’s meeting with Putin would be in the second half of Tuesday, but he refused to be drawn on Russia’s red lines, saying that megaphone diplomacy was not helpful.
The Russian President has said the discussions so far are not about a draft agreement but about a set of proposals that he said last week “could be the basis for future agreements”.
He has repeatedly said he is ready to talk peace but that if Ukraine refuses an agreement, then Russia’s forces will advance further and take more Ukrainian territory.
Against this backdrop, Russian military commanders told Putin on Monday that Russian forces had captured the frontline towns of Pokrovsk and Vovchansk.
