Vladimir Putin has agreed in principle to return to three-way negotiations with the United States and Ukraine on ending the war, the Kremlin said Wednesday, after President Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, urged him to consider exactly that during a meeting in St. Petersburg. Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy adviser, told reporters the talks could resume after Nov. 10 and would focus on "building a security system for Russia and Ukraine after the conflict ends."
Witkoff raised the idea in his opening remarks. According to the transcript released by the Kremlin, he told Putin he hoped for "some good conversation between us about resumption, potentially, of trilateral talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States," and asked him to consider it "as the next step in the peace process, so we can begin to have technical teams discussing what are those next steps." Even if the day ended without a resolution, Witkoff said, talking it through might be important, adding, "I think the world is waiting for us to get there."
The session at the Constantine Palace ran about three hours, the Associated Press reported, citing the Kremlin. Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's special representative for investment and economic cooperation, sat in on the Russian side, and Witkoff said Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, would join by video link. The accounts of Ushakov's remarks gave no timing more precise than after Nov. 10 and named no venue.
The agreement is a shift for Putin, who had resisted summits with Trump and Zelenskyy aimed at winding down a war now more than four years old, the New York Post reported. Only last week, angered by Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy sites, Trump had floated excluding Ukraine from trilateral talks and inviting China and Russia to meet with the United States instead, according to the Post.
Witkoff reached St. Petersburg from Oslo, where on Tuesday he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders to weigh a proposal covering security guarantees for Kyiv, economic recovery funds and other items, a document he then brought to Putin. Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who attended the Oslo session, said it "made genuine progress." Norway's prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, told the broadcaster NRK on Wednesday, "I think we may have entered a phase now where the Russians are also looking for opportunities for diplomacy," and said Witkoff planned to return to Oslo for more consultations after his stop in Russia.
Witkoff began his own remarks by thanking Putin for the release of Stephen Hubbard, a retired American teacher who had been imprisoned in Russia; Putin told him Hubbard was at Pulkovo Airport. The AP described the release as an apparent goodwill gesture after Trump asked Putin to free him.
Witkoff went on to call the Oslo meetings productive, saying "there is some degree of momentum." Putin, who spoke first, had thanked him and Trump for their attention to the conflict, saying Trump had stressed in their conversations the importance of ending it to prevent further losses on both sides. Putin also described Russia's "special, trusted relationship" with Iran and offered to help settle the crisis there. Witkoff thanked Putin as well for lifting Russia's ban on diesel exports, saying it would help American farmers and truckers, a step that angered some U.S. lawmakers, according to the AP.
Big gaps remain. The administration's efforts since early last year to end the war have made no significant progress, the AP noted, and there was no suggestion of an imminent breakthrough, with the two armies still locked on the battlefield and trading daily long-range strikes. Russian attacks overnight in Kyiv killed three people and wounded 12, the city's military administration said. Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said Tuesday that Moscow was willing to listen to new American proposals but did not expect a "miracle" from Washington.
An earlier, narrower truce has not held. Trump said Oct. 11 that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop attacking energy infrastructure, yet Russia has kept striking Ukraine's power grid and Kyiv has hit Russian oil refineries. On Sunday, Ukrainian strikes set an oil export terminal and a depot ablaze in St. Petersburg.
Trump has kept up the pressure on Kyiv. "We want Zelenskyy to make a deal," he told reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. "We've given a lot to Ukraine. We've gotten absolutely nothing back except grief, death, tremendous monetary loss."
Zelenskyy said in an interview broadcast Wednesday on Fox News that freezing the conflict was the "minimum" required from Russia. "Right now, we have to freeze, and I think this is (the) real way to end this war," he said. On Tuesday he listed security guarantees for Ukraine, the fate of occupied territories, postwar reconstruction and a possible ceasefire as the issues under discussion.