ReutersUS envoy Steve Witkoff met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Friday, as Donald Trump urged the Russian president to “get transferring” on a ceasefire in Ukraine.
The Kremlin mentioned the assembly lasted for greater than 4 hours and centered on “facets of a Ukrainian settlement”. The talks, Witkoff’s third with Putin this 12 months, had been described by particular envoy Kirill Dmitriev as “productive”.
Trump has expressed frustration with Putin over the state of talks. On Friday, he wrote on social media: “Russia has to get transferring. Too many individuals ere [sic] DYING, 1000’s per week, in a horrible and mindless warfare.”
It comes as Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg denied suggesting the nation could possibly be partitioned.
The Times said that, during an interview with the paper, Kellogg had proposed British and French troops could adopt zones of control within the west of Ukraine as a part of a “reassurance pressure”.
Russia’s military, he reportedly advised, might then stay within the occupied east. “You can nearly make it appear like what occurred with Berlin after World Struggle Two”, the paper quoted him as saying.
Kellogg later took to social media to say the article had “misrepresented” what he mentioned. “I used to be talking of a post-ceasefire resiliency pressure in help of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” he wrote on X, including: “I used to be NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine.”
Neither the White Home nor Kyiv reacted to the feedback instantly. The BBC has requested the Instances for its response.
Earlier on Friday, European nations agreed €21bn ($24bn; £18bn) in military aid for Kyiv.
On the occasion, Europe’s defence ministers mentioned they noticed no signal of an finish to the warfare.
Forward of the Putin-Witkoff talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov mentioned there was “no must anticipate breakthroughs” because the “means of normalising relations is ongoing”.
Requested whether or not discussions might embrace organising a date for Putin and Trump to satisfy, Peskov mentioned: “Let’s have a look at. It relies on what Witkoff has include.”
Beforehand, Witkoff had a gathering with Dmitriev on the Grand Lodge Europe in St Petersburg, the place a convention was held on chrome steel and the Russian market.
Dmitriev, the 49-year-old head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, visited Washington final week and was probably the most senior Russian official to go to the US for the reason that nation’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In the meantime Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Kremlin of prolonging the warfare throughout a go to on Friday to the location of a 4 April Russian missile assault on his house city of Kryvyi Rih. The assault killed 19 folks, together with 9 kids.
He additionally alleged that lots of of Chinese language nationals had been preventing with the Russian military. It comes after Ukraine mentioned it had captured two Chinese language nationals.
“We’ve got data that not less than a number of hundred Chinese language nationals are preventing as a part of Russia’s occupation forces,” Zelensky mentioned.
“This implies Russia is clearly making an attempt to delay the warfare even through the use of Chinese language lives.”
Zelensky laid flowers in entrance of photographs of Herman Tripolets, 9, and seven-year-olds Arina Samodina and Radyslav Yatsko.
Ukrainian presidencyHe later reiterated a name for air defence methods “to guard lives and our cities”.
“We mentioned this with President Trump – Ukraine isn’t just asking, we’re able to buy these further methods,” he wrote on social media.
“Solely highly effective weapons can actually be relied upon to guard life when you’ve got a neighbour like Russia.”
Trump has beforehand claimed he might finish the Ukraine-Russia battle “in 24 hours”. On Friday, he declared that it might not have occurred in any respect if he’d been within the White Home in 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
“A warfare that ought to ld [sic] have by no means occurred, and would not have occurred, if I had been President!!!,” he wrote.
In February US and Russian officers met in Saudi Arabia for his or her first face-to-face talks for the reason that invasion. Officers have additionally been assembly to debate restoring full diplomatic relations.
Trump has additionally had a fractious relationship with Zelensky since his second time period as US president started, culminating in an offended confrontation within the Oval Workplace in February.
The US tried to dealer a restricted ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia within the Black Sea, just for it to stall when the Kremlin requested for sanctions imposed after it launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbour to be lifted.
Trump has since mentioned he’s “very offended” and “pissed off” with Putin over the dearth of progress in agreeing a truce between Kyiv and Moscow.
Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Andrei Kelin, advised the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the US is just not its ally.
He mentioned America and Russia had not been in a position to go from “complete mistrust to alignment in two months” since Trump returned to the White Home.
“We’ve got too many disagreements,” he mentioned. “However we’re engaged on these disagreements step-by-step in numerous areas.”
Earlier this week, Washington and Moscow went forward with a prisoner swap.
Ksenia Karelina, a Russian-American, was sentenced to 12 years in jail in Russia for donating $51 to a Ukrainian charity when the warfare started in February 2022.
The Los Angeles resident was freed on Thursday morning and exchanged for Arthur Petrov, a twin German-Russian citizen arrested in Cyprus in 2023.
He was accused of illegally exporting microelectronics to Russia for producers working with the army.
