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Shkruar nga PamfletiPresident Donald Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was received by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Wednesday ahead of expected talks, the Kremlin said in a brief statement.
Steve Witkoff, President Trump's envoy, met with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the fifth time this year on Wednesday, holding talks that Trump has described as crucial to deciding whether the United States will proceed with new sanctions against Russia.
A short video released by the Kremlin showed Mr. Putin greeting Steve Witkoff warmly, while Yuri Ushakov, Mr. Putin's foreign policy adviser, watched from behind an oval meeting table.
Earlier on Wednesday, Witkoff was greeted at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport by Kirill Dmitriev, an economic aide to Mr. Putin who has been his top aide in the Kremlin. Russian state television later showed Mr. Dmitriev and Mr. Witkoff walking in the morning sun in Zaryadye, a landscaped park near the Kremlin walls, before Witkoff entered the Kremlin for his meeting with the Russian president.
It was the fifth visit to Russia this year by Witkoff, a longtime personal friend of Mr. Trump, who now holds the title of special envoy for peace missions.
On each previous visit, Witkoff held hours-long talks with Putin himself, gaining extraordinary access to a Russian leader who has met with few Western officials since the invasion of Ukraine, and who rarely grants audiences to foreigners who are not heads of state.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said this week that he “does not rule out the possibility” of a meeting between Mr. Witkoff and Putin this time around.
Those meetings helped facilitate prisoner swaps that freed two Americans held in Russia, and helped pave the way for phone calls between Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump. But neither meeting brought clear signs of progress in ending the war in Ukraine, one of Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy priorities.
While President Trump initially seemed to give Mr. Putin the benefit of the doubt and blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for prolonging the three-year war, he has recently appeared increasingly harsh toward Putin in public comments. Putin, on the other hand, has sought to appease and engage with Trump without showing any willingness to compromise on his broader goals in the war against Ukraine.
Trump said on July 28 that he would give Moscow 10 to 12 days to end the conflict or face a new round of financial sanctions, a deadline that expires soon.
When asked Tuesday whether he was still considering sanctioning countries like China that buy Russian energy, Trump said the United States "will do quite a bit of that," but suggested Witkoff's visit would determine next steps.
“We have a meeting with Russia tomorrow,” Trump said. “We’ll see what happens. Then we’ll make the decision.”
Mr. Putin’s forces have advanced on the ground and bombarded Ukraine with some of the heaviest airstrikes of the war in recent months, even as Mr. Trump has attempted to negotiate peace. The United Nations said June had the highest number of civilian casualties in a single month in three years, with 232 people killed and 1,343 wounded, and that preliminary data showed “this worrying pattern” continued into July.
Overnight, Russia attacked Ukraine again with drone strikes. A summer resort in the Zaporizhzhia region of southeastern Ukraine was hit, killing two people and wounding 12, including children, Ukrainian officials said.
Zelensky on Tuesday encouraged new sanctions on Russian oil.
“For Russia to move towards peace, it must be left without money for war,” he said.
Energy exports are the main source of revenue for the Russian government, but those revenues have fallen as the price of Russian oil has fallen. Russia’s Finance Ministry said Tuesday that the Russian government collected about $9.8 billion in taxes on oil and gas in July, a 27 percent drop from a year earlier when measured in Russian currency./ The New York Times
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