ReutersThe American special envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg on Friday as Donald Trump urged the Russian president to “move” on a cease-fire in Ukraine.
It will be Witkoff’s third meeting with Putin this year, during which the United States failed to agree on a full ceasefire with Ukraine.
Trump has already expressed his frustration with regard to Putin on the state of the talks. Friday, he wrote on social networks: “Russia must move. Too many people before (sic) die, thousands per week, in a terrible and insane war.”
The meeting comes as the United Kingdom and Germany presided over a rally of Ukraine allies in Brussels, where 50 nations agreed by 21 billion euros (18.2 billion pounds sterling) military for kyiv.
Before the talks, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that there was “no need to expect breakthroughs” because the “relationship standardization process was underway”.
Before his talks with Putin, Witkoff met Kirill Dmitriev for the first time at the Grand Hotel Europe in Saint Petersburg where a conference was held on stainless steel and the Russian market.
DMITRIEV, the 49-year-old chief of the Sovereign Fund of Russia, went to Washington DC last week and was the highest Russian official to go to the United States since the large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
When asked if the discussions could include the establishment of a date for Putin and Trump to meet, Peskov said: “Let’s see. It depends on what Witkoff came.”
The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, accused the Kremlin of extending the war during a visit Friday on the site of a Russian missile attack on April 4 against his hometown of Kryvyi Rih. The attack killed 19 people, including nine children.
“We have information according to which at least several hundred Chinese nationals are fighting within the framework of the occupation forces of Russia,” he said.
“This means that Russia clearly tries to prolong the war even using Chinese lives.”
The president laid flowers in front of photos of Herman Tripletles, nine, and seven years old, Arina Samodina and Radyslav Yatsko.
He then reiterated a call for air defense systems “to protect lives and our cities”.
Writing on social networks, Zelensky said: “We discussed it with President Trump – Ukraine is not only asking, we are ready to buy these additional systems.
“Only powerful weapons can really be invoked to protect life when you have a neighbor like Russia.”
Ukrainian presidencyTrump previously said he could end the Ukrainian-Russia conflict in 24 hours “. On Friday, he said that it would not have happened at all if he had been at the White House in 2022 when Russia launched his large -scale invasion.
“A war that should have had LD (sic) never occurred, and would not have arrived, if I was president !!!”, he wrote.
Trump had A fractive relationship with Zelensky Since his second mandate as an American president has started, culminating in an angry confrontation at the Oval Office in February.
The United States has attempted to negotiate a limited ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia in the Black Sea, only for it to hold where the Kremlin asked for sanctions imposed after launching its neighbor’s large-scale invasion.
Trump has since said that he was “very angry” and “upset” with Putin on the progress of the acceptance of a truce between kyiv and Moscow.
Earlier this week, Washington and Moscow went forward with a exchange of prisoners.
Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American, was sentenced to 12 years in prison in Russia for having made a donation of $ 51 to a Ukrainian charitable organization when the war began in February 2022.
The resident of Los Angeles was released Thursday morning and exchanged against Arthur Petrov, a double German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023.
He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for manufacturers working with the army.
