Vladimir Putin greets Steve Witkoff at the Kremlin on Jan. 22, 2025.kremlin.ru
President Vladimir Putin met late Thursday with an American delegation led by White House special envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss the latest developments in talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, a day before planned trilateral discussions in Abu Dhabi.
“The talks lasted around four hours and were highly substantive and constructive. I would also say they were extremely frank and conducted in a spirit of trust,” Kremlin foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov said in a statement.
Witkoff was joined for a second time by U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The two arrived in Moscow from the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Witkoff said this week that he believed Russia and Ukraine could be nearing an agreement.
Ushakov said the meeting at the Kremlin focused largely on conveying the results of recent U.S. discussions with Ukraine and its European allies as part of negotiations on an American-backed peace framework first presented in November.
He said the sides agreed that “without a decision on the issue of territory… one should not expect to achieve a long-term settlement,” signaling that the Kremlin remains unwilling to compromise, at least publicly for now, on its key demand for control over all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“We are sincerely interested in resolving the Ukrainian crisis by political and diplomatic means,” Ushakov said. “But until that happens, Russia will continue to pursue its objectives… on the battlefield where Russian forces have a strategic advantage.”
His comments have become a familiar refrain from Russian officials amid months of stalled attempts by the Trump administration to negotiate an end to the full-scale war in Ukraine, which is approaching its fourth anniversary. Putin has insisted that Ukraine hand over the Donbas despite not controlling all of the territory, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected the idea outright.
Grow your report
