Special envoy of the Russian President and chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev said talks on the settlement in Ukraine underway in Miami were pressing on “constructively”.
“Discussions are being held constructively,” Dmitriev told reporters, adding that talks will continue on Sunday local time.
Dmitriev met with U.S. President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
A Russian source told Reuters that any meeting between Dmitriev and the Ukrainian negotiators had been ruled out.
On Friday, Putin expressed confidence that the Kremlin would achieve its military goals if Kyiv didn’t agree to Russia’s conditions in peace talks.
In Kyiv, meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Ukraine would back a U.S. proposal for three-sided talks with the United States and Russia if it facilitated more exchanges of prisoners and paved the way for meetings of national leaders.
“America is now proposing a trilateral meeting with national security advisers — America Ukraine, Russia,” Zelenskiy told local journalists in Kyiv.
Ukraine’s top negotiator Rustem Umerov said U.S. and European teams on Friday held talks and agreed to pursue their joint efforts.
“We agreed with our American partners on further steps and on continuing our joint work in the near future,” Umerov wrote on Telegram of the discussions in the United States, adding that he had informed Zelenskiy of the outcome of the talks.
In parallel, European Union leaders agreed to provide 90 billion euros ($106 billion) to Ukraine to meet its military and economic needs for the next two years, although they failed to bridge differences with Belgium that would have allowed them to use frozen Russian assets to raise the funds. Instead, they were borrowed from capital markets.
