U.S envoy Steve Witkoff has met Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg, as Donald Trump urged the Russian president to “get moving” on a ceasefire in Ukraine.
The discussion which took place on Friday, lasted more than four hours according to the Kremlin, and focused on “aspects of a Ukrainian settlement”. Special envoy Kirill Dmitriev described Witkoff’s third meeting with Putin this year as “productive”.
Trump has conveyed his dissatisfaction with Putin’s progress in negotiations. On Friday, he said on social media, “Russia needs to move.” Too many people are dying, hundreds every week, in a cruel and needless war.
It comes as Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg denied suggesting the country could be partitioned.
The Times said that, during an interview with the paper, Kellogg had proposed British and French troops could adopt zones of control in the west of Ukraine as part of a “reassurance force”.
Russia’s army, he reportedly suggested, could then remain in the occupied east. “You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War Two”, the paper quoted him as saying.
Kellogg later took to social media to say the article had “misrepresented” what he said. “I was speaking of a post-ceasefire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty,” he wrote on X, adding: “I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine.”
Neither the White House nor Kyiv reacted to the comments immediately. The BBC has asked the Times for its response.
Earlier on Friday, European nations agreed €21bn ($24bn; £18bn) in military aid for Kyiv.
At the event, Europe’s defence ministers said they saw no sign of an end to the war.
Ahead of the Putin-Witkoff talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was “no need to expect breakthroughs” as the “process of normalising relations is ongoing”.
Asked whether discussions could include setting up a date for Putin and Trump to meet, Peskov said: “Let’s see. It depends on what Witkoff has come with.”
