Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff met Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin as the White House launched its latest effort to get Moscow to agree to end its nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine.
Witkoff, 68, was joined at the Kremlin by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner two days after the pair were part of talks between American and Ukrainian delegations in South Florida.
Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Tuesday’s discussions would go on “as long as needed” and only an interpreter would join Witkoff and Kushner on the US side.
Prior to the meeting, Russian state news agency TASS published video of Witkoff, Kushner and Kirill Dmitriev — the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund — strolling through central Moscow after dining in a restaurant near the ancient fortress.
Meanwhile, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky continued his tour of European nations Tuesday, visiting Ireland one day after meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, who said Monday that the two leaders had spoken by phone with Witkoff ahead of the Putin meeting.
Zelensky said that he also met Tuesday with the Ukrainian delegation that had just returned from Florida — claiming that the parties had “finalized” a 19-point peace plan drafted during talks earlier last month in Vienna, without elaborating.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also joined the Sunday talks, acknowledged to reporters that “much work remains” to secure an end to Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Second World War.
Witkoff and Kushner arrived in Russia hours after the Kremlin claimed its forces had captured the logistical hub of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine after 21 months of trying.
Zelensky, however, told reporters in Paris that fighting was still ongoing in the city that was formerly home to 60,000 people.
