(AFP) – US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russia’s top economic negotiator Kirill Dmitriev on Friday, state media reported, the US official’s third visit to the country as Washington pushes for a ceasefire in Ukraine. US President Donald Trump is pressing Moscow and Kyiv to end the more than three-year-long conflict, but has expressed anger at both President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky over a lack of progress.
Footage published by Russia’s state TASS news agency showed Witkoff and Dmitriev leaving a hotel together in Saint Petersburg. The Kremlin said Putin would also be in Saint Petersburg on Friday, without saying whether the two would meet. Witkoff has held two previous meetings with Putin in Russia since Trump returned to the White House in January. After their last meeting, Witkoff, a long-time Trump ally who worked with the US president in real estate, said Putin was a “great leader” and “not a bad guy.” The envoy’s praise of a president long seen by the United States as an autocratic adversary highlights the dramatic turn in Washington’s approach to dealings with the Kremlin since Trump took office for a second term.
His visit to Russia also comes ahead of crucial talks between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s nuclear programme, scheduled Saturday in Oman. Witkoff, whose sweeping remit covers the conflicts in both Ukraine and Gaza, is set to lead the US delegation for the negotiations. Trump previously appeared to threaten to bomb Iran if it does not agree to a new deal to limit its nuclear programme. Moscow, which counts Iran as a close ally, has urged for a diplomatic solution and warned military confrontation would be a “global catastrophe.”
– Rocky road to reset – Trump has pushed for a broad rapprochement with Moscow which has yielded some results. On Thursday, Russia freed dual US-Russian ballet dancer Ksenia Karelina from prison in exchange for suspected tech smuggler Arthur Petrov. Karelina, arrested last January while visiting Russia to see family, was serving a 12-year sentence on “treason” charges after she donated the equivalent of around $50 to a pro-Ukraine charity.
Russia will discuss more prisoner swaps with the United States, the head of Moscow’s foreign intelligence service Sergei Naryshkin said on Friday. “Dialogue with the new US administration will certainly continue in various directions, including the issue you mentioned,” Naryshkin told reporters when asked about future talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that prisoner exchanges helped build “trust, which is much needed” between the two sides after ties deteriorated under former US president Joe Biden.
US and Russian delegations also met in Istanbul on Thursday for talks about restoring the functioning of their embassies, which drastically scaled back staffing as the relations between the two nuclear powers cooled off. However, despite a flurry of diplomacy, there has been little meaningful progress on Trump’s main aim for a Ukraine ceasefire. Trump recently told NBC News he was “very angry” and “pissed off” with Putin after he criticised Zelensky’s credibility and called for a transitional external administration to be put in place in Ukraine. Putin last month rejected a joint US-Ukrainian proposal for a full and unconditional ceasefire.
Separate talks in Saudi Arabia last month resulted in the White House saying both sides had agreed to halt aerial strikes on energy targets. But no formal agreement was put in place and both sides have accused the other of continuing such attacks.
© 2024 AFP
